Sunday, November 2, 2025
SKELETON
You hold onto the mantle
of my hips, knit them to yours.
Underneath, the jutted bones
of the pelvis, the iliac crest, sculpted
like a seashell. Your hands
grasp the knobs - the skeleton,
fibrous and calcified, soon enough
stripped clean without the canvas
of skin, red strip of muscle,
the jellied yellow tissue.
These bones, at last naked
like winter branches. The hips,
ribs, and skull - the inside finally
out. The eye sockets emptied -
no longer a lookout.
Like the last page of a book,
holding the air of already having seen.
Emptied of recognition - emptied
of capillaries mapping the eyelids red.
Emptied of the fistfuls of flesh
in your hands. Emptied of this moment -
the intermission of tension and delight,
the silver quiver of the almost.
SUZANNE ROBERTS
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