Symphony of Bone

 

The dance of the legs moves through me,

I trace spirals to the rhythm of the stars,

inside the breath of the vertebral cord,

flowing electric along the spine.

I am an intimate symphony, cascading bone,

held in the quivering notes of cello and piano.

I am the music tracing itself from the inside out.

melting fixed forms,

muscles becoming seaweed,

dancing with the currents of the femur’s spiral,

and of the tibia,

the malleolus,

and the astragalus,

caressing the arc of the Milky Way.

I breathe galaxies through the marrow,

my spine, a bridge of stars,

remembers the origin of every turn.

—Lorena Wolfman (2020, translation 2025)