By Lukas Kofoed Reimann
In the late summer sun, there was a field of wheat. Their heavy heads swayed in the breeze and their roots dug their way slowly through the dirt. Then one day, a noise interrupted the quiet. At first it was rumbling and unfamiliar in the distance. Then the roots felt an ominous vibration through the earth and tensed up. The heads tried to stretch their dry feelers out to get a glimpse of what was coming.
In a moment of panic and confusion the stems where cut. They were propelled through hot metal chutes and separated from their seeds. Right before emerging on the other side, they were pressed together and held with a string. Those who were unlucky enough to end up in the middle were completely in the dark, with no hope of sunlight, water, or breeze.
For a while the haybales lay spread out on the close-cut field. Unmoving. Both too close together and too far apart. Then they were gathered, stacked on a cart, and driven away. As the commotion died down, the smallest of them found itself alone. Unable to move or grow, it stayed where it had been dropped.
As the weather became colder and the breeze transformed into icy winds another disturbance arrived. It started as a tickling and scraping. Slowly some straws were pulled out, others were pressed closer together. Painstakingly a hollow was formed inside the bale. In there a family of mice made their winter residence.
Lukas Kofoed Reimann is a trans* writer, scholar, and editor who lives in Berlin. His writing is often concerned with questions of identity and belonging and explores his experiences of transition and chronic pain in particular. In 2022 his text Undiagnosed was selected as one of the runners up for the Berlin Writing Prize, and in 2023 he is a recipient of a work-stipend for Non-German litterature from the Berlin Senate. Lately his work has appeared in Danish in Trappe Tusind and in English in Overcom Magazine.
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