The left bone is missing or perhaps the doors
we broke through. Three, to reach this one
-colored room, light shuddered and the fog
spoke clean. These greyscale tones, emptied
hues. Windowless walls and the dark of weather
stripped leaks, day’s thieves. Anything to block
light. Remember the body’s branches, shoots.
The image of a tree, without a bird beating inside
its framework of white. When I size each image,
we become disembodied, behold the body’s
strumming. My—it’s like the broad-skinned maple
I used to tap for sap, New England November,
hands divining the trunk for fluid, filled vats.
The invisible made visible and the syrup boiled
and parsed. I picture a bottle glowing, lucid
like ribs, the glass retrieving. See how the body reveals,
on the slide, its quiet sap. Before us, the xylophone’s notes
unending, turned to diagnosis, name. Here, more
air clutters the right. The density of rib misread as metal,
missing. Mass unseemliness made the matter of soft tissue
sound. Light undoes itself, rustling. An affliction
hides thorns. Near my chest’s drum—less tissue, grey leaves.
