qarrtsiluni

I have become my bones.
I wear my skin
like a shield of leaves,
like wing cases. I am safe
here at my core.

My mother grooms herself.
She turns and turns before mirrors,
buffing the peach, the downy,
the over-ripe as if
you can hide behind beauty forever.

My father watches apples
falling in October. No-one
will gather them now.
He dreams the old dream
of fruit that lies unharvested.

My lover drinks. His eyes
burn at me across
the beaker’s rim. ‘What
is the nature of this journey
that she needs no flesh, no comfort?’

I have become my bones.
They are a cage for the dust
that is my element.
I diminish. It is cold
here at my core.

by Dick Jones

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