My Mother's Bones
I see them in blackboard chalk
pressed soft but hard enough
to snap. I see them in the ashes
of her Marlboros, smoldering
from the inside out until fracture.
In dry-rotted tree limbs crumbling
beneath gravity. In ice cream cones
caving in, revealing the absence
I knew was there but ate anyway.
I see her bones in rusty rebar.
Thawing icicles. Peppermints.
Cardboard. Peanut shells.
Moth wings. Sea foam.
TV static. In the doctor’s office,
I map constellations of bone
corrosion in her X-rays—black stars
stretched across white galaxies
of bone soon to supernova
like the flash of the X-ray screen
before the doctor shuts it off,
my mother’s bones filed away.
pressed soft but hard enough
to snap. I see them in the ashes
of her Marlboros, smoldering
from the inside out until fracture.
In dry-rotted tree limbs crumbling
beneath gravity. In ice cream cones
caving in, revealing the absence
I knew was there but ate anyway.
I see her bones in rusty rebar.
Thawing icicles. Peppermints.
Cardboard. Peanut shells.
Moth wings. Sea foam.
TV static. In the doctor’s office,
I map constellations of bone
corrosion in her X-rays—black stars
stretched across white galaxies
of bone soon to supernova
like the flash of the X-ray screen
before the doctor shuts it off,
my mother’s bones filed away.
William Brown is a Masters student in poetry at Texas Tech University where he also serves as an associate editor for Iron Horse. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel, Glass Mountain, and other publications.
My mother has osteoporosis and once she threw a peppermint at my head so hard it broke, revealing tiny pockets of air in its core. I felt I was looking into her bones, and this poem explores how now I often see her wherever I look.
My mother has osteoporosis and once she threw a peppermint at my head so hard it broke, revealing tiny pockets of air in its core. I felt I was looking into her bones, and this poem explores how now I often see her wherever I look.