Title Request #3

That you thought china bones
existed only in the bodies of dolls—
that's one. Ligature for elegy.

The body of you and this body.
The body of you and other bodies.
The body of you making bodies

of all bodies. A leg crooked
over your hip. Tonight, clavicle.
Tonight, sweet tendon. Tonight

the chuff awaying degrees
of separation. That you thought
a body permeable, soluble

as salt, that this body could
matter after that body didn't—
that's two. We are sealed.

Hermetic as walnuts.
A cast of bodies lies in dust,
along the smooth edge

of this headboard, along
the winter curve of this wrist.
That you thought your body

godlike, could plunge your hands
in this dust and make of it
another body—that's three.