Annette, I can’t seem to write anything longer than 14 lines these days, so — by default — I am working on my series of FOUR-LETTER WORDS. This poem was prompted by a WRITE IT! prompt: God is Your Shoulder // Is the bone in you / the place you didn't / grow a wing, wrote poet Molly McCully Brown in the poem "God is Your Shoulder." Whether your believe in God or not, take a deep breath and imagine part of your body is divine. Describe that holiness inside you.

Fuse

What is god but the healed clavicle collaring of
statuesque posture. You stand tall to the ache you
were born with, that existential clagging for belonging,
connection. God gives you bones to articulate like
runes, an alphabet of protrusions, bumps, grooves,
chronicling attachment, fracture, fusing of bone with
momentum. You feel for the finger bowl at the base
of your throat. God is the squared off shoulders,
the press of three fingers at the fluent hollow,
the strut of two bones on the catwalk of becoming.
God is the plush of velveteen pulse, the smooth nap
of what perceives as lovely, the high-stepping susceptibility,
the suture of windpipe and breastplate. God is the thin-
skinned vulnerability, the body notched with soul.