Sad Bones

The open throats in your heart
sing sore today. Rasp, heave
and rust. Winter’s worn you
like an outgrown sweater,
spun the blood of your hands
into five wool threads, frayed
pieces of where or from.
Sad under the skin
of your fingers, sad fissures
in the armor of your thoughts.
Two hundred six sad bones.
I can’t reach that far inside
a body to rid your throats
of sore, make walking feel
good again, when in the morning
you’ll wake, remembering
how you almost said love
(out loud) but didn’t.

***

Tara Skurtu studied Creative Writing at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She’s a 2012 Tennessee Williams Festival Poetry Prize finalist. She received the 2010 Academy of American Poets Harold F. Taylor Prize and the 2010 Marcia Keach Poetry Prize. Tara’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Poet Lore, The Los Angeles Review, The Southeast Review, Salamander, Hiram Poetry Review, The Comstock Review, Amethyst Arsenic, and the anthology Viva La Difference; Poetry Inspired by the Painting of Peter Saul.