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Description
My father died in a cornfield.
I never got the full story, but I imagined
his death, the blood seeping into the ground,
crows coming and sitting on his body, and come harvest
we'd be eating corn around the kitchen table and
we'd all taste the blood but no one would say anything,
we'd just chew slowly.

After that, my mother made me wear a suit of armor.
I woke up on my 6th birthday and she was sitting
on the foot of my bed with polished steel
and a handmade journal.

On the first day of school, I came clanging
up the walkway, and my mother smiled and nodded
and said Oh, he has a disease. I think she
was ashamed of my father's death. I never
took off my armor except when my mother
was watching and protecting me, though
I think that if a itinerant worker got upset
and came at me with a shotgun in the corn field,
she couldn't do anything.

My mother didn't like to see me grow. That meant
we'd go to my brother the blacksmith
and I'd have to take off my armor so I'd
be naked, my white skin with red lines in it
where the steel plates sliced into my skin
with every step. My brother would nod solemnly,
and I'd sit naked and cold on the cold dirt floor
as he heated up my armor and flattened it out more.

My wife never made a knight in shining armor joke.
I couldn't take the entire suit off around her
(I promised my mother). So I think she saw
my face twice, my legs three times, my fingernails
never. Once I woke up and she had opened up
the grille on my face mask, and she was just
looking with her plain Jane eyes.

When my mother got sick with TB,
I sold my suit of armor. I took it off
in the store, and they marveled at the
luster and sheen of it, and I walked proudly out,
naked and with the money in my hand.

When my wife put clothes on me,
they barely protected me.

Description
My father died in a cornfield.
I never got the full story, but I imagined
his death, the blood seeping into the ground,
crows coming and sitting on his body, and come harvest
we'd be eating corn around the kitchen table and
we'd all taste the blood but no one would say anything,
we'd just chew slowly.

After that, my mother made me wear a suit of armor.
I woke up on my 6th birthday and she was sitting
on the foot of my bed with polished steel
and a handmade journal.

On the first day of school, I came clanging
up the walkway, and my mother smiled and nodded
and said Oh, he has a disease. I think she
was ashamed of my father's death. I never
took off my armor except when my mother
was watching and protecting me, though
I think that if a itinerant worker got upset
and came at me with a shotgun in the corn field,
she couldn't do anything.

My mother didn't like to see me grow. That meant
we'd go to my brother the blacksmith
and I'd have to take off my armor so I'd
be naked, my white skin with red lines in it
where the steel plates sliced into my skin
with every step. My brother would nod solemnly,
and I'd sit naked and cold on the cold dirt floor
as he heated up my armor and flattened it out more.

My wife never made a knight in shining armor joke.
I couldn't take the entire suit off around her
(I promised my mother). So I think she saw
my face twice, my legs three times, my fingernails
never. Once I woke up and she had opened up
the grille on my face mask, and she was just
looking with her plain Jane eyes.

When my mother got sick with TB,
I sold my suit of armor. I took it off
in the store, and they marveled at the
luster and sheen of it, and I walked proudly out,
naked and with the money in my hand.

When my wife put clothes on me,
they barely protected me.