Bone Song - SWWIM

Photo by Tin Fogdall

Bone Song

We sat upstairs while they slipped her into a bag.

On the desk, in a photograph album,

she kept walking into the ocean,

holding her sister’s hand.

Sun dribbled down between javelin firs.

A small amount of other people’s ashes

get mixed in. Your signature

means you understand.

Without her body, she was washing away.

Memory is a strange Bell— I can’t

make it ring. The phoebes are coming back,

their ridiculous, wagging tails

a balm. Blown limbs

beside the trail. I can’t haul back up

how she touched or smelled

but when I sing,

it’s her voice.

She was mostly oxygen, sixty percent

breath. For one hundred mornings,

I’ve stood at the mirror

—it’s not me there but the light

I keep shedding. By this time,

she has fallen

somewhere as rain.

- Published on SWWIM Every Day, September 15, 2023