1000 years from now

when they find my delicate

laced up corpse—

my femur will whisper

Anthropologists will murmur

—Here

is the

Twenty First Century American Woman

See how small

She was? She lived in a wall.

 

 

 

 

I am made of a whimper starting in my knee

underneath the patella,

wrapped around the anterior cruciate,

tucked in cartilage

that shoots up the femur.

 

 

the femur is the strongest

            and longest

            bone in the body—on average,

            26.74% of a person’s height.

            Did you know

 

In these bulbous pieces of marrow and calcium are my needs.

These masticated, dog eaten bones carry me—

            hold up my pubis, my vagina, sloping handles of my waist,

xylophone ri-i-i-ibs, and all-too-often aching chest.

 

These staves propel water, skate fields, and tread deserts

These brilliant bones swing over branches, scratching their

fat-mother thighs and leaving them breathless

and beaten raw

 

My femur carried my nine-year-old body through the Eagle Creek, like all

little girls. They told me to swim

swim unencumbered

by a shirt, let my breastless torso free—

 

                                      (that little girl

                                      has nothing on, see how happy

                                      she is

                                      in the wa

                                      ter with the lit

                                      tle boys?”)

 

I shaved my legs at 13. Somehow

vulnerable tibias gave orders:

                        DON’T

                        cut us with branches or smother us with scum!

                        NO

                        bruises or hair

 

 

But the femur, brilliant blessed bone, was silent.

It loved me. It loved me for a long time.