Rebecca Kokitus: My Bones

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

closet skeleton 

my spine feels wrong, like

someone dissected me 

in my sleep and took 

a single vertebra, souvenir 

if I gained the 20 lbs 

I starved away, a doctor 

could blame the pain 

on my body 

the truth is that my bones 

are hollowing themselves like

storm strewn trees 

but I look indestructible, 

the way a well-bred animal does—

watch me flay myself to prove 

my own biology,

to find the textbook skeleton

in the closet of my flesh 

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Rebecca Kokitus is a poet residing in the Philadelphia area. She has had poetry and prose published in various journals and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018. She has a poetry chapbook entitled Blue Bucolic forthcoming from Thirty West Publishing House in 2019. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram at @rxbxcca_anna, and you can read more of her writing on her website: https://rebeccakokitus.wixsite.com/rebeccakokitus.