Abigail McFee

for Caro We have a bag of bones in the back seat: cradle of sacrum, blood-tinged spine. You gathered them from the scorched grass at Mosquito Creek. Held them to your chestwithout tenderness, the way we held onto resentments the August we became friends— our misplaced devotion to love gone bad.I thought I smelled lingering …

Pelvic bones are nothing like wingsor blades. I know because I saw them in a meadowat Mount Diablo. They must have come from a mother cow,birth canal a wide hollow. I touchedthe wild rye that pulsed inside.*Once, in the desert, my motherand I argued about the shape of the earthuntil I wept. Wind chimes jangled …