Lauda Corporalis: An Anorexic Canticle
"praying hands" by Katie Tegtmeyer/CC-BY via Flickr
I sing supplication as the fingers seek stony purchase.
Salvation comes in Latin.
Os zygomaticum. Cartilagines costales.
Clavicula.
Manubrium.
Then the vertebrae: C3, C4, C5, C6, C7, T 1, T2, T3, T4…
My day, by the numbers… L2? L3?
And back again, over the tumultuous, rivuletted no-man’s-land of the belly.
To linger there is to risk capture.
Press southward, then, to the iliac crests
Twin Capitals of my osseous capital.
Do not think of the treachery of the thighs, the traitorous calves.
Despoiled by war, their acreage is not prime.
Further south is the Swiss outpost of my structure;
Ankles, feet, revealing nothing in their dull neutrality.
This is my Lauds and my Vespers, this litany of anatomy.
My net worth defined by such cheap commerce in skeleton.
Bones are the quintessence of self.
