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At the nine and one-half week mark

Your foot is still swollen

Your ankle looks like a loaf of rye bread baked

On a winter night and placed inside a blanket

As winds howl through cracks in the walls.

Or something meaty and coarse

Illiterate peasants tear between their teeth

Marching beneath a mercenary banner

 Fighting a war for glory and power

Though not their own.

The instructions are:

Elevate, ice, and exercise,

Form the alphabet three times a day with your foot.

Do not dangle your foot for hours above any battle scenes

Celebrated in embroidered tapestries

Warming cold castle walls.

For the last month you have worn an air cast

Made of plastic and plastic fabric

Following six weeks of plaster and then fibreglass

Monstrosities.

 You march beneath the banner of a cane. This is next.

 The electricity goes out. You push past a blond woman on a horse

Climbing the stairs. She’s dressed like a fish.

Or so it seems with glimmers of moonlight passing through cracks

In the roof.

You rescue two children.

This is not possible you are on crutches.

 Oliver Cromwell’s army is marauding through the streets

Looking for Irish to enslave or decapitate.

You tear down a tapestry showing Puritans Arriving in America

And roll up the children.

You put a loaf of fresh bread between them

Dragging the tapestry to the corner of the Great Hall

Behind a counter with pastries, a cash register, and postcards.

 You find your crutches.

Your air cast is light and removable

For a month and a half you wore what felt like anvils

And told yourself you weren’t going crazy.

This doesn’t really bother me you said.

 You tell yourself you won’t be captured.

At the fracture clinic they said you would walk in

On September 8th with a cane and a limp.

Your foot fits in your unlaced walking shoe.

Oliver Cromwell is trying on wooden shoes.

Where did he get those?

He laughs a high-pitched laugh.

 His Puritan followers board a ship for the Caribbean

Leading captives bound neck to neck.

 You walk right through them and shudder with cold.

You limp into the sunshine

Stopping at your neighbourhood cafe.