Bones

​We must have always known about bones. 

​​We must have suspected – back even when suspecting meant snuffling the air with 
narrowed eyes – that the fine white hard delicateness within the creatures we ripped open and ate 
existed also within us. We must have seen at some time or another one of us crushed below a 
tree, a mammoth, a cliff, and seen the shattered sharp ends of bones yawning out of the broken 
flesh.  

And we must have connected them, somehow, to the uprightness we felt, to the tough, 
brittle structures of our fingers, to the cracking in our walking hips. We must have pulled the 
skin off of animals’ ribs, and stroked our own ridged sides, pondering.  
We must have been scientists, comparing our arms to the wings of birds. We must have 
seen that they too bend at the elbow, that we too have two-boned forearms. We might have 
looked suddenly at the sky, cast our arms behind us, and beat them. We would have felt the 
solidity of our femurs, the thick weight of our pelvises. We would have imagined feathers, and 
stroked our matted hides. 
 
We must have balled our bony fists in frustration. We must have seen our knuckles, and 
spread our soft-hard hands in wonder.