My Enduring Bones

by a.m. moscoso

I remember spiderwebs

and dried leaves

and the smell of something dead in the walls

at my childhood home by the lake.

My room was in the attics, but I spent most of my time

on the roof

even when there were storms.

I wrote my name, I carved it deep into the trunk of the cherry tree that I fell from when I was six years old.

I hit a branch on the way down

and the Doctor pointed out that branch, which caught me under the arm and cracked one of my ribs…probably saved my life…because it broke my fall.

Sometimes I drive by that house and I wonder if one day, long after I’m gone

will someone look out of one of those windows and see a shade of a girl falling through the branches and then caught back up again by the dark arms of the tree safe from the hard ground below?

Because you know,

I think I haunt that house already.

I can feel it

in

 my bones.