Bones
Many years from now, if it’s my bones they find
entangled with the roots of a old tree,
I will tell you with absolute positivity and
the calm that only comes with certainty,
that the bones that were once covered with the
skin of my feet will be worn down flat and
misshapen with overuse and I hope they realize
that it was from a life spent always chasing after
you. Will they find a ribcage curled tighter around
itself than any other in human history? Will they know
without the use of scientific instruments and
those tiny hammers and tiny chisels and the little
toothbrushes used to brush aside the extra dirt that
spends it’s life trying to live inside the hollow
of my skeleton? Will they understand that those
ribs curled like a fist the day I reached inside
myself and tore out my broken heart for you to have
and hold and decorate your life with as you saw fit,
a splash of red, my color red, layered atop the
painting of your existence. Will they even begin
to grasp the story that was my life? No matter
the dust they brush away from my pale white
remains, no matter the indention of my tired hands
in the rock it rejoined, can they ever understand
the weight of that decision, the magnitude of removing
my favorite part of myself and giving it away freely
with no hope or promise of ever getting it back?
Will they know it was you that it was given to
if your bones are lying quiet too far away from mine?
I wonder if they will wonder how my bones grew so old
and gathered so much dust if the heart that fed them
has been gone for so long? I wonder if they will marvel at
the sacrifice they had no idea I made with a gut feeling
and a sadness and respect they are confused to feel
centering inside themselves? If I knew of a way,
I would carve your name into the very framework of my
body so that everyone, everywhere, would know it was
you that kept me alive, and you that I grew old for,
and that the bones of my face grew so used to the tracks
of tears that there are lines on my skull and that
all around the hollow where my eyes once lived, the hard white
and bare bone itself became wrinkled, from all the laughter.
All I know is that on that day, the day of white tents
and small stakes and the strings that mark out the grids
that mark out the places of interest for the diggers to dig
and those with the schooling to decipher, I hope they find
my bones, and I hope they take their hats off, despite the sun
that beats down upon their skin, and bow their heads in reverence
to what they find. The dusty bones of an unknown man with a ribcage
that curled tighter upon itself than any other. I hope they find
where my heart once lived and I hope they find the roots of an
old tree braiding their way around that empty space. I hope they
write my story and write it well and true and fill it with nothing
but the understanding of the hope that I lived my life with.
I hope they believe with bedrock faith that on the day my ribs
began curling, that tree began growing with its own secret hope
and its own secret life. That it knew, just as well it knew
that it’s roots would find water or its leaves would know the
steps to dance in the wind, or its branches felt their own purpose
of feeling hands climb up them, that no matter how tall it grew
or how bent its trunk, one day it would hold a swing, and one day
that swing would hold your silent sighs and eyes that quietly closed
the higher you went. That one day, its leaves and the moonlight would
be the only audience to your exaltation as you could almost
feel the warmth of the stars on your toes when you threw your head back
and stretched your feet out at the top of your swinging. That your
tears, whyever you cried them, would find themselves beneath the
pipelines of ant tunnels and over the skin of blind worms and
ignore all other plant life on their journey to that trees roots.
That it would be the water that fed its growth and that all this time,
it was growing from me.
-Tyler Knott Gregson-
