When I was a child
my feet were made of straw.
I could look down at them and
pick holes in them, and through the skin
see the straw and dust,
particulate and raw.
Knuckle deep I explored
this odd phenomenon,
thinking how
the wicked witch said
the last to go
will see the first three go before.
But I am not a scarecrow nor a scared crow,
standing static in the bone-white moonlight,
crucified for no purpose,
waiting on some random waif
to come along and save me.
My puckered skin disgorges
long threads of flattened fibre,
like fragile sunshined sinew,
curling around my fingers,
a void inside my feet.
I take a thread and needle
and sow up the rough-edged skin,
but later I pick more holes,
ankle, shin, knee, hip, and groin holes
each torn and sown in turn,
to see, how far it up my half-formed body
this strange affliction goes.
Though the straw is poorly packed,
in each fresh wound it shows
its harvested intricacies,
its sharp-edged, fibrous slack.
Taking my mothers blood-red picker,
I unpick the threads around my chest
Peeling back each fold of skin and crest
of bone to find
where my heart should reasonably be,
a family of field mice,
asleep within my breast.
In a nest of woven, golden wheat they lie,
their tiny bodies sighing.
With every straw-filled breath they take,
I think they stop me dying.