Boneyard
Once I held the stars in my head, all the constellations conspiring. Told no one. Set my face in the usual colours. Brave as bone. The usual shapes. Maps on the table, escape plans.
The doctors call me ugly, draw over my bone structure, trace the routes where the coral will fuse.
When am I more water than land? The radiologists keep looking. We forget, they say. We forget you have only half. They light the routes for the doctors.
The surgeons call me ugly. They build a reef of my jaw, chart the swollen new of my mouth. No room for stars.
The coral, confused, trace their older star charts, still swim each other’s scents, the water they still dream brighter than this boneyard. Beside my bone, they secrete new maps. Escape plans.
Decay (Taphonomy)
decay is a process:
stages, measurements,
milestones. wet and
then dry. we carry all
the passcodes in
our cells. there,
see the mitochondria?
watch for the flash.
quick — only seven,
eight decades or so.
then? then the deer
will pull the string
lights from the bush
in front of the house.
we’ll let them twinkle
on the dark of the lawn.
no more celebrations,
no more celibacy. we
won’t feel it happen.
one day, snow; the
next, dust. a shock
of birch in a stand of
pine. cars passing in
the fog, deer there and
then not there. the slow
drip you don't hear until
it stops dripping.
Laura S. Marshall (she/they) is a poet, educator, and former linguist who lives outside Albany, NY. Their work appears in South Dakota Review, Bennington Review, trampset, juked, Okay Donkey, and elsewhere. She received an MFA in poetry from UMass Amherst, and has served as a special features editor for Jubilat. You can find her on Twitter at @lsmarshall and on Instagram at @ls.mars.hall.
Photo credit: Matthew Barra