Bone palace masquerade 

Laid out like old bones found
scattered from the bend of the highway
to the riverbank, sunk or sinking,
half a hand tipped up to the sky --
who cares about the rest now?
 
Who cares if your head is full
of stones or if your feet never touched
the ground? Or if you were always scattered
like autumn leaves, cooked in the sun,
a pattern baked into existence; it’s ordinary
 
to fall apart, to lose pieces of yourself
along the way & hope to be found
someday, to be read like human arcana,
symbolism in bone, meaning in flesh.
Who cares about the rest now?
 
Who cares about half-divinations,
about a toe carried off by the current or
a palm left cradling a heart jarred free
by the hum of open pavement? We are
at our best when we are incomplete --
 
always searching for the ways we can
make the remaining pieces fit & inventing
new ways to tell the world we are whole.

---

LE Francis is a recovering arts journalist writing poetry & fiction of varying length from the rainshadow of the Washington Cascades.
Her work has recently appeared in Elephants Never, Sage Cigarettes, Mookychick, Nightingale and Sparrow, & Marías at Sampaguitas.