Hot breath creaks inside my chest, groans
my slats with pearly condensation.
I am twenty – and I am warped,
with a body bent like shanty shingle, angled
mad enough to slide off sides and tumble into flower
beds of strangers.

My bones – once new, once green – grew
children ‘long a doorframe, climbing swirls of ivy
ink and wispy curls to lintel.
Wily little imps they were that tore their jeans
and shed their sleeves each fall, that slept in mud
and came inside if just to smudge
their mother’s ivory trinkets. Shelf dwellers
in a dusty sea, elephant and whale – bone
more bone than my own ever dared, or cared, to be.