Heart Bones

She wanted bones for her heart.

Smooth black coils of bone holding without spring

the cords of her want.

Lust was an empty birth, remembrance was its cord

cut and crusting in her hands, an ugliness and a life it’s own.

She remembered an open prairie full with dust shower and wind.

But she had never seen such, and she would not be given

the drunk lust of younger hours, youth in a pale glass mirror,

a bird that wasn’t a prayer of goodbye.

Emptiness meant devotion.

The wounds made scabs that would bloom

the tendril scars of surrender.

The loss opened her like a breast torn away to cure its disease

could release the heart from the vanity of desire.

And the ghost homed in the root of her spine

would free her like bundled nerves feathered out,

blown open, and forgiven for their love of wanting.

She wanted heart bones.

The color of the river at night

before the moon lit its rapids and stone.

Bones as dense as oak, as heavy as iron,

cutting clear through the core of her organ

as it beat and beat, like a pounding horse

in open gallop over the floor of the prairie.