| The bone-yard lay beneath my adolescent bed,
crammed awkwardly in two suitcases � I got to know those bones quite well, the waxy feel of femur and the grinning dark brown skull, contriving often to assemble who they might have been from what was left behind in disarray � It never worked and it was only when I turned sixteen that I realised, the skeletons beneath my bed were incomplete and random. (The really sadstuff was tranced-out on formaldehyde in the dark, jar-lined garage) It didn�t feel right then to try and make one person from a crowd and so I let them jostle on, as best they could, inside their ancient suitcase-tombs. My family was that silent mismatched boneyard, emotions, dreams and aching hearts bursting with their secrets, all jumbled up in chaos, just within my reach but far beyond constructive comprehension. (I used to wonder if the thing in the jar was one of those my mother lost, I used to gaze in wonder at its tiny hands and feet, its perfect veins, and cry for all of us �) Still I tried to make a wholething out of what was left though it could never work, there was nothing there, no sense of any real desire to join and far too many pieces missing, lost or carelessly abandoned on a charnel heap of oh-so-sterile processed pain � When I left them all behind, I did not turn around to witness their end-times, or their final dissolution, but for a moment I allowed myself to contemplate the under-bed bone-yard that awaited them and whether, in another life, they would make much better use of flesh and blood and bone. |
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| *image: jean-paul avisse |