The bones out of my fingertips
Starting at the wrist and working my way to the nail
Carpus
Metacarpal
Phalanx
I ground them with rock
And sprinkled them in a circle on Alabama clay
Mixed with a vile of mom’s witch-hazel
Preserved in a glass jar
Tempting your God to save me
Because you always said you felt his presence
Strongest under my touch and you called me holy
Those days
Now
I wonder if he would spare himself from the nails
Or rather I need to believe
I went back to the field yesterday, lost one
Mostly ragweeds
Save a couple daises sprinkled about
I found my phone
Screen intact and facing up with no unread messages
We have run in a full circle
Overlapping at the equator and you told me to leave it here
When we head west
Southern soil will need something to remember us by
“Let them know we were here”
Now I’m here where I buried you last February
With my spine right beside
I’m considering a scorched earth policy
That starts in my tongue and moves to his teeth
He told me he started having dreams
That they crumble and fell from his mouth
When he met me
Little pillars salting the earth and feeding the flame
He can’t ask what it means
Or know that it might be them saying what he can’t
When he saw
I keep your collar bone under the bed
And dig it out to roll between my lips
When I miss fingers being able to touch
He felt his ribs realize I was taken from yours instead
And my lungs ache and deflate because the earth is burning
The ragweed stinks
And the daises make small pleas for help
Between coughs
That the wind carried with the dust of my bones
Across the Georgia state line
Because it knew what your God didn’t
Or choose not to
I wonder if I even wanted to believe
Did you feel my spine curdle in your arms, lost one?
Out with month old milk for the begging strays
The new fingers woke up this morning with his teeth
And all of his ribs
Staring and reaching for
The Lazarus shaped love pressed beside him in bed
As I head west
I watched Atlanta burn, lost one
When the soldiers marched through
I fell to ashes upon ashes with it
After you needed me for fighting
Whatever ghosts you born knowing
And I was born knowing to keep eyes and feet trained
Toward blue skies and mountains alike
Making it 3,000 miles away from the field that
You watched me run through
Early April
9 months before the burial
Powder in your hand as you sunk through
I finally resolved to leave you and my phone
Because I don’t care if they remember
My lungs beg for a healer as Atlanta’s embers burn
Red and fading
How does it feel in your bones today, lost one?
To know that I left my spine with you
But still completed the journey
Our ribs returned to dirt too fast to make
Do you feel the impact in your sternum, lost one?
As their feet march across state lines
Where the dust from my fingers leads toward crisp air
Begging to breathe
Fuck if I ever come back to the pile of enamel left
Where my hands use to lay on our chest
Mine–just mine now
Because southern earth is scorched
And my eyebrow is singed
As I realize the daises in the field weren’t worth saving
I still grind my bones for the damned to leave for dogs
Mouths wet from last months milk
And their eyes seeing beyond my divinity
They believe
And there are holes in his hands
So, I let my lungs take me west, lost one
I left your bones to rest, lost one