Rebecca Temerario

Broken Bird

How do we explain the body?

Its quiet catacombs

of modest voice?

I linger on the way the body

affords such pleasure

even in pain.

How the body aches

through longing, through the bitter

feelings you own alone.

The body does not care, and becomes

something bigger than that, rising up, inches

sprawled. After the accident, after

the news, my veins still warm

to heat in leg, lip, earlobe.

How I falter my fingers across

these crevices, knowing my insides, knowing

this body has caged my heart like a broken bird.

I can’t tell you how we dispose of this:

I have a sliver in my nose and scars

on my forehead, front of wrist, bloody

knees and cartilage in my nose. One pupil

wider than the other and widening in disbelief-

what’s not to be proud of?

You’re not living in this skeleton.

I am.