The butter and the bone
I’m at a point
Where I’m so tired of always
Being right about to crack.
I feel myself groan and stretch
On the daily
Without ever wondering what the other ways
To be, might be.
But I’m starting to see
Yes, I’m starting to feel
That instead of bone,
I can be butter.
Up til now I’ve lived my days
Like an old bone, boiled far too long
In a pan of foamy, greasy water
A child’s fingers could snap me in half
The way I’ve been living
Makes me brittle
Porous and pocked,
With no meat and no forgiveness
To give me cushion to move and bend.
I want to sway like a palm tree,
Seduction,
Dancing in even the heaviest of winds
But here I find myself an old twig
On the very point of the ‘snap’
I can feel the maddened fingers tightening
And I’ll have no more of it.
It’s too jagged and stretched,
In this place of bone,
This place of scarcity.
I’m tired of the fear and the white-knuckled grip
Like some gnarled old hand, clinging to one end of
A last-ditch wishbone.
I’m done with it.
I want to be smooth, creamy, and jolly.
I’d rather be like butter than some old over-cooked bone.
I want to be sexy and smooth.
About everything, not just the easy, normal stuff.
I want people to be able
To come spend time in
The soothing, refreshing butter.
Spread me onto the bread.
Dip your hesitant, greedy fingers in me
And lick them after.
People will look for the bone, I’m sure.
But they won’t find it.
That old thing was never me
Only what I tried to hold,
Out of fear,
Fear that there was no butter
And the feeling that I had to suck
My nourishment and hope
From a shard that had nothing left to give.
I’m throwing it down,
Like the cracked, tired thing it always was,
So that the butter can show up on the table.
Slide it over to me,
And I’ll eat.
I’ll rub it on my face, my strong shoulders,
My sturdy hips
I’ll swallow mouthfuls, full for the first time,
And I’ll know deep down,
Deep down in the creamy, dreamy yellow, gentle depths
That there’s a lot more butter where that came from.