FROZEN & FRAGILE BONES
Real, Flesh, & Skinny Jones
Water, cold as the start of a running river after the end of winter, washes across my face. Imprints of rock, still pending removal, mark the side of my left cheek. A pain – the type of unexplainable pain from lying in the same spot for hours – radiates through the hollow cavern between my hips. I woke up in the middle of a river, flowing heavier than what death should have allowed me to endure. My eyes, swollen, no longer experience what waited so long to be seen. The tips of my fingers, regaining feeling, caress the willow branches right above my face. Its stems, tickling the tip of my nose, make me quickly lunge to wipe away any form of discomfort, though trust that nothing about this is comforting.
They call me Skinny Jones, and every sound they make while saying it rings true. The inflection, the subtle piercing sound of the ‘s’, makes me itch for worms in my skin which don’t exist. Package me up and slip me down a straw; there’s not much to me, consumed by none but consuming it all. I have never felt what it’s like to be consumed, to have someone eager to hear my inflection. A weakness only felt in the knees after being gone for some time is something I’ve never seen. The collapse of a body from the sheer thought of being gone. Except now, I can’t hear anything but the crunch of leaves from a deer not ten feet away and the fish jumping in and out of the water. No one here to call me Skinny Jones; all the noise, phased out, and all that’s left is my realization of my fragile, frozen bones, and real flesh beginning to become very cold.
Water, cold as the start of a running river after the end of winter, washes across my face. Imprints of rock, still pending removal, mark the side of my left cheek. A pain – the type of unexplainable pain from lying in the same spot for hours – radiates through the hollow cavern between my hips. I woke up in the middle of a river, flowing heavier than what death should have allowed me to endure. My eyes, swollen, no longer experience what waited so long to be seen. The tips of my fingers, regaining feeling, caress the willow branches right above my face. Its stems, tickling the tip of my nose, make me quickly lunge to wipe away any form of discomfort, though trust that nothing about this is comforting.
They call me Skinny Jones, and every sound they make while saying it rings true. The inflection, the subtle piercing sound of the ‘s’, makes me itch for worms in my skin which don’t exist. Package me up and slip me down a straw; there’s not much to me, consumed by none but consuming it all. I have never felt what it’s like to be consumed, to have someone eager to hear my inflection. A weakness only felt in the knees after being gone for some time is something I’ve never seen. The collapse of a body from the sheer thought of being gone. Except now, I can’t hear anything but the crunch of leaves from a deer not ten feet away and the fish jumping in and out of the water. No one here to call me Skinny Jones; all the noise, phased out, and all that’s left is my realization of my fragile, frozen bones, and real flesh beginning to become very cold.