By Jordan James
On my midnight pallet lying,
full of dread and stars in my belly,
I count out all the bones
I had broken in my time:
a middle finger on the left hand,
perpetually flying the bird;
left arm: ulna, radius, clean break;
right arm: ulna, radius, cut through skin.
My bones were built with sugar
and electrolytes, sucked from a bottle
like a breast. The calcium dried
up once you discovered what lactose did
to my body. “I am so sorry,”
you told me, for what has been done
to my bones, and how you failed
to prepare them for the world.
Jordan James has been published in Cagibi, Throats to the Sky, Product, and The Robert Frost Review, with work forthcoming in The Westchester Review. He is currently a graduate instructor at USM working on his Ph.D. in Creative Writing.