there are days
i only feel like a burden.
someone who fills backseats
so that someone could be at the front.
and the weight of my own bones
are too heavy for a family name to carry.
heavy enough to crush a sorry girl.
my breaths are sometimes apologies
people refuse to hear.
im sorry if i am this way.
i wish i could be something more.

let me rip away the ivory
from the elephant in the room
rebuke its presence
cover my ears
so i don’t have to realize
these anxieties you bring
they long to dethrone me
rip apart each bone
pick apart this broken brain of mine
with each triggered nerve
i scream it’s okay
putrid false indifference
hopeful lies
for the barren sober pain

I want to die out here with you
I want to decompose in your arms
our flesh slowly growing softer, and softer as our skin rots and our organs decay
our bones slowly growing closer, and closer
until our leg bones are not separated by leg flesh and our hip bones are not separated by hip flesh and our hearts seep together over our rib cages and our skulls press together, chin to forehead
dry leaves tickle our feet and the cool wind soothes our hot bones and the earth covers our clasped hands
until they can no longer tell who was me and who was you

Bones-Let’s let them be dry and ******
As if that be the way they were found
Let them crack and fracture and bruise, amongst the concrete ground
Let them have their space to break and wither away-
Let’s turn the other cheek-while behind us they quickly decay
And then let’s use their fossils for fuel, weapons or laddels in every size
As simply as to stir the ***, and smug at their great demise
If not ashes to dust, then what'll be of our bones we fast to give away-
Sewn better than not, twist an arm for play-

But simple pleasures wither too, bones we toddle but dare not fix
Let them wonder how we toyed our hearts- like a feverish game of pick-up-sticks.

-Bre Womble

From Spirit's plane to ER, I
Waited 4 hours post triage.
Watched a middle aged white lady wail herself to the front of the line for her pain was the only thing that mattered in a room of other equally ill patients.

My body shocked and perhaps still in the sky.
It was this moment that solidified that I had matured: grown to know long suffering love more that the other traits. Patience was as rooted as my African ancestry, my black race.

ON LOOKING AT SCHILLER’S SKULL
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Here in this charnel-house full of bleaching bones,
like yesteryear’s
fading souvenirs,
I see the skulls arranged in strange ordered rows.

Who knows whose owners might have beheaded peers,
packed tightly here
despite once repellent hate?
Here weaponless, they stand, in this gentled state.

These arms and hands, they once were so delicate!
How articulately
they moved! Ah me!
What athletes once paced about on these padded feet?

Still there’s no hope of rest for you, lost souls!
Deprived of graves,
forced here like slaves
to occupy this overworld, unlamented ghouls!

Now who’s to know who loved one orb here detained?
Except for me;
reader, hear my plea:
I know the grandeur of the mind it contained!

Yes, and I know the impulse true love would stir
here, where I stand
in this alien land
surrounded by these husks, like a treasurer!

Even in this cold,
in this dust and mould
I am startled by an a strange, ancient reverie, …
as if this shrine to death could quicken me!

One shape out of the past keeps calling me
with its mystery!
Still retaining its former angelic grace!
And at that ecstatic sight, I am back at sea ...

Swept by that current to where immortals race.
O secret vessel, you
gave Life its truth.
It falls on me now to recall your expressive face.

I turn away, abashed here by what I see:
this mould was worth
more than all the earth.
Let me breathe fresh air and let my wild thoughts run free!

What is there better in this dark Life than he
who gives us a sense of man’s divinity,
of his place in the universe?
A man who’s both flesh and spirit—living verse!

Keywords/Tags: Goethe, Schiller, skull, bones, charnel, house, grave, souls, ghosts, spirit, flesh, death, shrine, divinity, universe

once we sat on the floor outside of the theater and talked about all of the horribly destructive things we wanted to do to our bodies

to crack open the sternum
to bite off the pinkie like a baby carrot
to pick at every imperfection on the skin until it is raw and ******

understanding the urge to undo and then rewind ourselves in ways that finally made sense was the first thing that tied us together

I cry these days
When I read positive news
Something shatters in me
And I think it is hope
Apathy has become a bedfellow
An unwanted lover loitering nearby
I feel myself falling apart, alone
My eyes find dark space
Settling there, trying to disappear
My bones grinding into the ground
Until rooted fingers born from their shavings
Grip my lungs, squeezing tighter and tighter
And my life screeches from chapped lips

Remember black winds of November nights,
rattle your bones, chill your marrow,
quiver time's arrow and rip the world's white
veil from a skeletal face. Throw
it. Watch it fold, caught on the cathedral,
high church of the ossified faithful,
whose whispered prayers will calcify us all.
Unveiled, the world is bones without a soul,
rattling as it grinds, creaking as it turns.
A flag flies / Calcium collects in urns.