Dull Bones

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i am reduced to dull bones

and swallowed i-adore-you’s

and something like mildly waking up

in the middle of another bookmarked

“dark and stormy night”

and staying that way, a flavour of

staying-up insomnia that’s only ever so

vaguely disinterested in keeping me untroubled

and undefined—staying up up and away

past my anachronistic bedtime

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there’s an itch within my dull bones

in places i’m frustratingly unable to reach

even if i stretched myself out thin

like human laffy taffy, sticking to the roof

of your watering mouth, like a communion wafer

when you’ve been rather sinful

and maybe just as bland—if not blander—

like human laffy taffy, and none the same too sweeter

the childish joke has been on me

but i never sent one over

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are my dull bones broken?

i’m no doctor and it’s far too numb

to agonise over, but sometimes my limbs akimbo

rattle whenever i accidentally hit the

banister on my way up the rickety stairs

to brush the fractured stubs of my broken teeth—

maybe it was just their fragments

i forgot to floss out, jangling a merry little melody

reminding me function—don’t malfunction—

the medicine cabinet’s full of spare parts, so go on

and remember: don’t trip on the second to the last step

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i would never be loved by my dull bones

and not because of them of them, either

i fancy, sometimes, that the tapestry of skin

precariously draped above them would be enough

to make me look close to resembling “someone”

but i can’t even fool myself in front of the mirror

with my spinning head upside-down

so who the hell am i trying to fool—

to impress—to stuff me into a tailored suit

and thread my emptied veins into a wedding dress?

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only me and my dull bones

my dull bones that jut out in strange places

like an abandoned jenga game

my dull bones that never remain in place,

no matter how many times i unpleasantly shove it back in

my dull bones that itch and break(?) and

cower under blanket-stitched skin and protest

whenever i get too comfortable being uncomfortable

living with their afflictions—affections—affectations

and i laugh it off again because

my dull bones feel ticklish; or is that just pain...?

ha-ha-ha. how silly of me to think

i could still be reduced to dull bones—sullen bones—dull stones—

when dull bones are all i’ve ever been.

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