by Elizabeth Lehman
I see your skeleton again.
It’s that time of year
when you have cast aside your leaves,
unflinching, unapologetically
departing thousands of tiny foolish notions
that it was ever better to hide behind
some contrived beauty
that is now wasted away,
quietly fluttering to the ground,
softly shattering beneath my footsteps
and returning to formless earth.
I see your skeleton again.
Not just your finest, greenest moment on boastful display,
but every single mundane one.
Every inch of limb and root telling a story of an instant
when you grew,
when you were,
a notation of times even when the sun was not shining
and the earth was frozen,
each moment equal and part of something larger than itself,
a timeline of winding curving branches
like the lifeline across my palm,
a map of a life spent
sometimes bending yet remaining
unmoved.
Elizabeth Lehman, a student at YSU, lives in Salem, Ohio. She studies Professional and Technical Writing, draws for fun, and considers her two children to be her finest creations.