A Clock Made of Bones

Time was never soft.  

It was bone from the beginning—  

a white cage ticking beneath skin,  

measuring us in fractures.

The spine is the pendulum:  

each vertebra a passing minute,  

clicking in rhythm  

with the weight of what we carry.

The skull grins at noon,  

empty-eyed,  

watching us wear the hours like brittle crowns,  

calcified,  

dust-thirsty.

We think time moves forward,  

but it circles—  

ribs looping breathlessly,  

every year a deeper curve in the back,  

every day a molar loosed from the gum.

The hands are made of fingerbones,  

grasping what cannot be held.  

They do not point.  

They accuse.

And what are we,  

if not the sand inside?  

The marrow ground down,  

the echo of a humerus  

hollowing in the dark?

To measure time with bones  

is to admit the clock is already dead—  

and still,  

it moves.