Bones
We were walking and discussing
the architecture of our future home, though we didn’t know it. Autumn settled on the bridge of her lips and I couldn’t tell her I didn’t want to kiss that cold – I was never any good at caring for her when she was sick. I had to keep asking her to repeat herself because the wind would unwind her words before she was done with them. The garage of bones we walked past stopped that fight, at least. A wind rode by, and on it floated a convergence of dust. She took my hand to tell me dust is never just dust – oh daughter of archaeology, you should know! What I don’t care about astounds me. Bone compels – the crucial architecture, the fundamental structure. What I might hone into a powder, fold into a paper square, talk into a spell. That gritty midnight mantra. She was always more comfortable with the blood – her hands neat on a raw piece slicing away the fat, chipping out a rogue vein, tongue between her teeth. There are proper and improper ways to hunger – crimson was always her favourite colour. Somewhere in our future my spade chomps at something where I am turning over a vege garden. We keep chickens, she keeps an axe. I still prefer skulls – the elegant syntax of heads without their faces attached. Her fingernails are never entirely clean. What she cares about confounds me – I don’t remember most of what we’ve said to each other – just the shape of her lips settling on her words – maybe we should dig them up but then, where would we keep them?
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