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poem submitted to "Skeletons" poetry contest, Seth Pina, sponsor, July 27, 2026
I wake to the sound of my own ribs humming~ a thin, metallic music as if someone plucked me like an instrument left behind in an abandoned room. The moon hovers at shoulder height, caught in the curve of my skull like a thought I can’t shake loose. Its light pours through me, filling the hollow places with a glow that feels almost like memory. I walk, though the ground doesn’t behave. It moves like a living thing rippling beneath my feet soft as breath, then hardens suddenly as if deciding whether I deserve passage. A bird made of dust lands on my shoulder. It peers into my empty sockets and seems satisfied with what it finds. When it flies away, it leaves behind a feather that whispers every secret I’ve forgotten. Sometimes I pass mirrors that refuse to reflect me. They show forests, oceans, rooms I’ve never entered— as though they’re offering alternative histories I might inhabit if I weren’t made of bone. But I am. And bone remembers in its own strange way. It keeps the shape of laughter, the weight of sorrow, the echo of footsteps that once belonged to me. Tonight the stars gather inside my ribcage, settling there like travelers seeking shelter. They pulse softly, a constellation trying to teach me how to feel again. I sit with them, quiet, letting their light thread through my marrow. And for a moment— a brief, impossible moment— I am not a skeleton wandering the dream. I am the dream wandering me.
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