The Sound My Bones Make

It's winter and the trees are speaking to me. They are telling me my bones are too small for this. I ask for a definition of 'this' and they bend under the pressure. Instead they say 'watch' and start shaking. When the trees shake the snow falls. When I shake I count every tremor in your body and call it mine. You are picking splinters from the slamming door, you are gathering them in bushels, you are handing them to me as a bouquet. I am pulling it apart again. I am using it to measure the length of my heart. I am counting two splinters, six splinters, one. I am pushing them into my palms saying "Grow, grow, grow" but the trees are telling me that this is how we break things, this is how we turn everything into ten-week-long funerals. I am stuck, I am the sound our bones make. I am being called to come outside because the trees are too cold, I see their roots pushing up against the dirty, dead snow. They are frozen ice and they are murmuring the word cold like a suspense scene. They are scaring me so I plant your convulsions in the ground. The trees are tapping me like this is something worth pointing out. They are knocking at my shoulders and I'm reminded of the door. "You could do this too." They are tapping too loud now and snow falls on my head. "You could do this too." The snow is muffling the creaking, I fight back and my bones stop shaking.

i have a piece 'love letter to winter' in the latest issue of atwood magazine which you can find here (on page 123)

(how to become a ghost, and forget who you were before)

i. i am such a small sea, i am such a small sea ii. at the hospital the nurse gives you a silver pin to wear in the crook of your arm and blood is coming out like lace. you’re thinking was it red sea or dead sea? and if there are pearls hidden inside you still. iii. you keep missing him even as he’s standing beside you holding your hand. you think it’s because some souls shouldn’t be apart and maybe you could stitch yours together if only you could find their beginnings.iv. you are partly still that young girl pressing your knuckles against your lips trying to feel the bruises blooming from where the boy with the bottlecap ring kissed you. v. you remember the blood running from you in lace ribbons and trying to keep the pearls inside. you say something mean to him because you can’t feel their silk circles under your skin. he tells you the length of your heart is the width of his back tooth. vi. you can’t let your heart grow or you’ll explode.

greensea

outside the trees whisper to me.

i have been in love with them my whole life

they are sweet and
 remind me
that 
my skin is made of stars
that tell me what to do


the branches stutter over me

in the winter they must look like dirty skeletons

to you

i keep getting distracted by
the number of strands my hair breaks into
outside the birds keep making nests from the pieces
outside i keep thinking the birds have a wonderful life
i wish we could leave them alone


there is no limit 
to your hatred

doctors cannot prescribe

something for the root of this


the trees are 
cutting at my wrists

trying to determine the age of me
trying to find the truth of my spine
bent up against the old drunk trunk

i have not made myself into
skeletons for you

because you have not died for me
you have not died

and the world

still loves you

you with quiet breath

Sometimes love is me with moth wings, me as a moth in the middle of your hands in the middle of the room and you whispering 'don't be afraid.' You, love, lighting up my new antenna, lighting up my heart as our backs breathe against each other. Sometimes I speak and the taste in my mouth refuses to convey with accuracy that piece of snow with no footprints. Maybe love is how many footprints we can put in the snow around the snow with no footprints. I'm digging my feet into your cold feet saying 'let's start dying' though that sounds morbid of me. Really it's the same thing as 'let's start living' but this way holds more urgency. I keep breathing in flutters on your fullstop skin and you cup my head in your hands. In your pocket is a field map detailing all the places I found you in the snow. There isn't one part of me that doesn't swell in oceans then melt too-large at the touch of you. When I'm alone in a room my bones hold me gently into place. My head is a spinning flower on the mountaintop. The trees slowly melt my heart.