Lindsey C. Johnson

Decay

A yellow husk withers
on the knotted floor of the cornfield.
Its paper-thin body
is devoured by the sun's rays.
The corn pickers
plodding through the maze of green
step on it,
leaving hideous imprints on its body.

Neither the sun
nor the harvesters
pay it any mind.
It is part of an un-special whole-
a grotesque transformation from
formed life to formless soil.
It lets out a crackle,
a cry for mercy,
but so do all of the other husks.

By the end of the day
there is less even than a husk left.
No body at the scene of the crime.