Illustration by Kaavya Gnanam
Well I heard some people
were made from stars. My mother
liked the hopeful songs. She drank
the sparkly wine and spun
my body round the living room
and how was I supposed to think
of bones when we were planets, in orbit?
I still remember when I bit
the concrete, asphaltish outside
the bus stop. Bloodletting, baby knees
are bloodier, I think. Sweeter, the whole
noon smelled of cherries, but I couldn’t
see the bones. So I didn’t think of bones,
because I was fruit, spilling juice
into a Powerpuff bandaid.
By the time I was a dogbone
on a boy’s front stoop, I knew about ribs.
I chewed myself, the slobber. I looked
like a stranger's bedspread and almost
meant it when I told my best friend
it’s a funny story. Well dogbones don’t
belong on stage. His stoop was a margin,
and by then. I knew it was a slatted rib, too.
Phoebe Mulder (she/her) is a first-year at Barnard College studying English, but please don't hold her to that. She loves postcards and snow in theory.