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Exoskeleton
There is no reward
for wearing one's
heart on proverbial
sleeve.
And so I stopped
years ago
decided it was better
to go exoskeletal
This way,
my shattered image
could precede me.
It took a while to
get the vertebrae
to straighten. They
wanted to curl up,
like a rollie-pollie.
Every time I would
stand at attention
they would snap
back violently
in dissension.
Then I mastered
how to newly
move, and I rattled
around the village
until I ran into you—
A shuffling heap,
with a wide gawky
grin of porcelain.
It wasn't long before
we did the Doo,
a slinky dance
that skeletons do
when exposed to
harsh florescence.
But the dangers
of a teetering femur
never
go away.
It seems that,
you could not
be seen with me
in public.
Would not express
your dreams to me
in private.
My pubis was
the screen you
viewed through
eyelids
which were
shut to the world,
once again.
I cried a salt cake
that day— a
dry
resistant crescent.
I baked it into
your lasagna
that night.
You ate every
last bit and
smacked your lips,
then peered past
my scapula to
watch the Bengals.
In that moment,
your dancing
duodenum crept
ordinarily into vain.
But you said,
"Carly Simon
never wrote a song
about this skeleton".
That was a fibular
rejoinder.
Even then I knew
that a carpus was
capable of
depressing phone
buttons— It
was a
matter of choice.
And to think
I fractured phalanges
for
you.
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Zeitgeist
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