Bone Spurs
What does the spirit do inside this body all day?
Pace the halls?
Press its face against the windows?
Was it sentenced here —
this bright thing I can't see —
convicted in some court in a heavenly realm
For breaking a law I will never know
Locked up in my body like a jail cell,
told to do its time,
to rehab its way back toward the light?
And will the body know when the sentence is served?
Does living in me hasten the spirit’s contrition ?
Is its only way out the death of my flesh?
Or is there a parole board?
I've been staring at these bumps on top of my shoulders.
The way they press up under skin
like something wants out.
Like the knobby joints of angel wings.
They grow so slowly like redwoods…
They creep like a glacier
They flower like a thunderhead cloud
Pressing upward all the time.
Maybe the spirit in me
Is close to finishing its time.
Maybe what I'm seeing
Is not a malfunction
but emergence —
The eternal self
Forcing its way through
The shoulders of the temporary one,
Millimeter by millimeter,
Almost ready to fly.
My doctor looks up from her chart.
"Terese," she says,
"It's only bone spurs."
