In My Bones

I didn’t really understand that expression, “feeling something in your bones,” until you. I feel you in the hollow of my chest, digging patterns into my ribs that no one else can follow. Your memory forms tracks I’ll trace over and over, an Orphesian fruitlessness that always circles back to the same, empty fate. I feel you at the tips of my fingers, I feel you in my joints, circling my wrist. The ending’s already been scripted, but I’m falling further in love with your ghost while reciprocation eludes this open palm. I feel you in my throat, crowding cartilage and muscle. And with every breath I take, air passes through the weight of words unsaid, coats my speech in a silver timbre to remind me of my position. Tell me, do those who surround you, those who occupy the same classrooms and halls and lives as you know how lucky they are? An aching green spleen sits on my hip bones while they trod on clovers without a second thought. If this love was dangerous when it was sticky, what is it now that I’m steeped in it? Rooted, buried, embedded all feel like they could just as easily be ripped out. You’re occupying a place far deeper, I feel you everywhere, pervasively and profoundly, immutably and immovably. I’m scarred, sculpted, stained. I feel you in my bones, I can never stop feeling you.