kintsugi

 

The act of ossification
is fucking neat.

A broken bone,
the weakest part of the body,
gets a shitton of calcium
deposited on the area,
not just reknitting the
flaw
but building it back stronger.

It's how fighters get superhuman strong.
Building the breaks back up
Again.
And again.
And again.
A little stronger each time.

While the mental fragility,
the reminder of the agony
in the moment of fracture
lingers,
the body,
well, the body does its thing.

It does that same thing to
close an open wound
with thin layers of dermis
until the scar tissue is thick
enough

to not sustain that wound again.

I sat skinned in an alcohol bath
my bones ground to dust
and waited for it all to
fucking grow back
stronger.

It did.
And it didn't.

Everything went back-assward

My psyche is cool as shit,
but it couldn't regenerate
quite enough to make me
you-proof.

My soul-bones,
the calcium cage that
holds my heart,
scream
relief

as you pour
yourself
into the cracked places
to smelt them together again,
in a way that's still broken
but beautiful

still damaged
but strong

as if I were a lacquered bowl
and you made me superhuman
by kissing filigree
along the lines of fracture.

The desperate
need for the feel of your
shoulder under my thigh
and your lips smiling
against my
smooth abdomen
twist into
the mangled
bone cage in my chest.

I don't know if we're superhuman.

But my hands run
through your hair
as your mouth tracks
along my inner thigh

and I know

I know we're more beautiful.