The CrowFeast Mask

Pulled off a fence line at the edge of a field that stopped yielding forty seasons ago. The bone is carved end to end in ritual scrollwork, ivory ridges cutting through black like old ink set under skin. The jaw hangs open on a row of tapered fangs. Straw erupts from the skull in stiff splintered lengths, every strand ridged and dry enough to snap. A broad harvest hat sits low across the brow, and the sunflower pinned to its band has gone black at the center, petals fossilized mid wilt. It was raised to keep the crows off. It failed at that. The birds learned the shape of it, then learned what was standing behind the shape. Farmers who worked those rows reported a sound like wind moving through dry stalks on nights when nothing moved at all. By the fourth season nobody harvested there. The mask stayed up. It is still watching an empty field. Every layer line is left visible on purpose. The banding across the straw reads as fiber, the ridging across the hat reads as woven reed, and the filigree holds its edge because the machine was told to carve rather than smooth.