Good Bones
We feel too fragile
for me to write about.
Stone words stumbling
into sheet glass coffins.
I bury my worth
in the soft-skin
cemetery
behind my church.
My body crumbles under
the holiest violence.
Cells splitting like
saints surrendering to grace.
Under the microscope, God
flickers. Divine mitosis.
Subdividing the cathedral
that lives in my marrow
My lungs call out
for more air.
Praying to Gods
that aren't there.
I hate the peace
I find in silence.
My bones walk the line
between decay and design.
Restructuring my molecules
with faith in mind.
I can’t make a good home
of this body I was given.
Every two years, I
pull down and rebuild.
Vertebral column
stands still through it all,
and I remind myself
I still have good bones.
-Dorothea Blythe
















