Skeletons
so, where's your love? it isn't in your gut,
among the fickle fireworks it contains
today. enjoy the joy and splendour but
they're fading fast. it isn't in your veins
or sleeping in a chamber of your heart
or hidden in your trousers (but again,
enjoy it while it lasts) or any part
of either eye, or even in your brain.
it's in the knees you use to scrub the floor
and in your elbows on the kitchen table
and in your hands, and in the hands they touch
in every way your fingertips are able;
you'll never hear about it from a card
but love and life and skeletons are hard.
[with thanks to Kai for the prompt; image based on a print by José Guadalupe Posada]
