A Brand New Skeleton (I can’t remember who I was) - Jazz Prisciandaro-Wood

She haunts me.

Comes to me in dreams and makes a home in my bones,

points to all my fault lines

and fractures.


Her ghostly hands hold the remains.

Ashen,

with an ache that lasts until waking,

a distant memory of the break.


She was resistant under firing.

Disturbed.

Vulnerable when cracked.

Wishbones, once pulled apart, do not heal.


She might be remade.

Might be malleable.

Carved from the clay of my body,

a better use for soil unfit for fruit or deep roots.


These new joints will surely collapse in the flood.

Unglazed,

I leave marks of chalky white dust.

Fossils all lost in the sea they once loved.