I.  

I wrote a poem about a boy and his ribs and his sternum because I wanted to hide behind his

skeleton, use his spooky-suit as a bomb shelter for the next time a grenade is launched my way.

You cried. You tried to hide -- beneath your colored roots, the beginnings of you which never

see the light of day, a breath, a backwards slide you wish you could spit out, swallow up the

tears away. I let you. Minded my own business in that car -- your car -- pretended not to see the

gray push through your chemical scalp.

II.  

Soap trickles down an oak tree  

in the woods at 9 AM, looking  

like a root made of a witch’s  

brew, except less mystic. I don’t  

know why there’s bubbles on this bark.

The two labradors on their leashes  

couldn’t have cared less, but all 

I thought about was how, even 

magic, the kind right in front of you  

is not enough to draw us in.

III.  

I’m folded into a stale crouton on your couch, sick from all of the psychiatric medication, and all I

can hear is you banging a spoon around in a glass filled with coke. When you waltz into the

living room, hand outstretched, I briefly meet you in the air to accept the flattened soda. “This is

what my mother always did for me,” you say. Goddamn. Didn’t realize your mom was a sorcerer,

a warlock who siphoned bombs into safety. I drink, you sit, and the sound of your mended

sternum hums with satisfaction.

IV.  

ster·num 

/ˈstərnəm/ 

the breastbone

when I googled “how does a sternum break” 

none of the results told me what you did. 

none of them cried.  

It’s okay.

V.  

I didn’t want to make it about me, you said. The poem. Your sternum.  

I frowned, resisted the urge to fold the corners of the day in half for you, make the edges a little

rounder, a little more palatable -- the Play-Doh pizza I ate as a child ‘cause Mom said I wasn’t

allowed to. The stare-down as I swallowed each slice.  

You didn’t, dumb-dumb.

VI.  

It’s like cleaning silver. You know, in the poor way. A pot of water boils on the stove and you lay

a sheet of aluminum on the bottom before dumping all of your jewelry into the stew of metal and

oxygen. Somehow, the aluminum melts off and binds to all of the rings and bracelets we forgot

about. When you take them out again, they sparkle. Your hands, they’re like that.

VII.  

It’s 12:41 AM. I’m sloughing off your couch 

full of flat coke, decidedly less nauseous.  

Keys yell in my hands and you say  

I would tell you to text me when you get home 

but that would require me to be sincere. 

I laugh so hard I snort and double back over 

making all of the benzos and mood stabilizers  

act up again. You smile with your whole chest

the full tank of mended bones and sinew  

vibrating with glee. I call you a gremlin  

and then I drive home. Sleep comes 

to us the way that coke does:

loud, safe,

controlled,

substance.