What have you done to me?
Morning wakes light
in the window.
I pull away the covers
and lift myself up,
but my bones fall out
between the sheets.
You are still asleep;
the sun creeps across your lips
and my skeleton beside you
cups your breast in his hand,
his bones fat-yellowed
and marrowed out with desire;
I leave your side and leave my love
beside you, I leave all
the white osteology of my love.
Is my love macabre?
My love rattles.
My love clatters and clacks,
my love snaps and pops at the joints.
I cannot quiet it.
I can try to bury
all the raw cartilage and calcium
of my love, I can try to crack it
and mortar it down
to so much grey dust,
but my love must be bone:
it wrestles under the muscle
and blood of my love,
under the skin of my love,
the bones of my love are what
the tendons and tissues of my love
bind to when I love you.
My love is lunate and scaphoid.
It is vertebral, sternal, my love
is cranial and pelvic and hyoid.
My love is two hundred and six
bone white statements of my love.
