I am married to an idea of stones, rounded,
each of a weight to take both hands to. Each
a possible center of wilderness. Yet an idea only.

I look down the perspective of my body: a sag
between the hips, thighs puffed with bruise,
toes spread and stiffening. Married, I say,
with a straining tether to an ancient heaviness:
loaves from a lost sea's deeps.

Arrange them how I will—a line like urns
upon a wall or introverted circle or random cluster
bowled across the pocked terrain—there is no
breaking from their brutal gravity.

This morning I found a familiar child, curled
in my room's darkest corner. "I will help you outside,"
I said. As I moved to him, an airy flux hummed
in my dead legs. Carefully I lifted him.

Like over-boiled chicken his little bones slid
from his skin, and outside, where the light blared
from the enormous stones, he did melt from my hands.