Footnote

Seabrook Leckie, "Burr hooks," 2008

I didn’t think to check my socks—not much for being
all princess-and-the-pea, me—and so the burr made
a sharp little caltrop surprise. Proof the body’s quicker
than the mind: in the moment before the “ow” arose,
I was hopping on one foot, peeling the sock back from
the other. In the moment after, I spy with my little eye
one spiny asterisk annotating my big toe, transferring
its painful reference from toe to index finger wholly by
inept accident. Where I live, these things happen. Here,
it’s either prickly, venomous, poisonous, pointy, itchy,
droughty, floody, or an uncomfortable combination of
all, ready to set new annotations in flesh and memory.