Rumination

She’s not made of bones
(or sinew, or keratin,
or protein)
and her back doesn’t elope a spine
to lean on, her weight
heavier than earth-bones.
The gushes of oil spills flowing like rain
is the only rivulet in her tears,
the fuel in her blood.

Conjoined with the nuts and bolts found
in the pits of Father’s attic
jaundice skin's impenetrable,
even to the flickering of the candle’s flame
hair rough as ash and long as veins--
she was a battlefield.

But there’s a heart that beats
somewhere in her chest,
rattling like broken teeth;
trying,
trying to shake its enigma loose

trying to thump,

trying to pump,
trying to bump

Like the dust in her lashes,
the forty years of silence in her lungs.
The cold of iron and tin and copper
turning to rust
the unexplainable famine
in her throat.

The yearning to read trembling lips.

The passion to remember.

The urge to touch

The will to listen.

Love.

All she ever wanted
in a body of loneliness.

The wind beneath her presence
the warmth of her absence
from the songs of willows,
The weeping of branches.
The twisting of fingers
tracing the ruminations of autumn.

She shapes with her lips
but can’t utter with her voice.

Her hands start to crack
like paper-pressed bones,
a crevice between the valleys
of her mouth bigger than a
faultline.

Soon she’s one of those things
that fall apart
the reason why doves mourn.