A siren at the edge of your farm blares a warning: potential accidents are fleeing your barn. You thought you’d secured them so tightly. You recall the recent shatter of your osteoarthritic bones, the scrape and slash of skin and nerve, and shudder at the threat of yet another imminent misfortune. You can’t hear the familiar mewling of mishaps, so you fiddle with your hearing aids, worry your boots onto your jagged toes and stomp downhill. In a frenzy, you judder open the barn door and search. You crawl and claw through mounds of hay scattered all over the concrete floor, straw sticking to your face and sweat drenching your clothing. As you rake, you tally some past casualties: a mangled meniscus from tootsies tangled in unfriendly terrain. A swath of flesh the size and shape of Austria shredded from your shin. Your pride. It goeth AFTER a fall, you mutter to yourself as you lean on your pitchfork, mourn the loss of the spring in your step and your youth, when the frame of your body was unbent and yielding, all your parts intact. How they did what they needed to do without asking. How lubrication was a given, flowed unbidden. Now, you’re startled to see mice nesting in white clumps of your long-gone hair, balled up and stuck into the trench. You stumble backwards, lightheaded, against the rotting door, then slip back outside and drag it closed. You heave and hang the heaviest lock you can find and wrestle the shackle into place. Click. Safe, you think, though even the grass slick with dew seems to quiver with laughter. You pocket the key, pat yourself down, clench your jaw, pay close attention to where you place your feet as you trudge back uphill to your homestead, lest trouble be lurking. By the time you arrive, you’ve forgotten to be vigilant. Your steps begin to meander and crisscross. It seems your feet are moving independently of the rest of you. The hallway rug you’d meant to tack down rears up cobra-like to snare them once again. As you corkscrew down, your silhouette flops beside you, lies spread-eagled like a caricature of a crime scene. Warned you, your shadow hisses and sneers. You swivel your eyes, worry who else might have watched you tumble, though you live alone. You moan and howl as you try to move. See ya next time, your shadow snickers as it peels away from the bruise of your body, sculpts itself into your armchair, rattles open the morning paper.