Iphigene here.
Christmas is just around the corner and hopefully as we get closer to it my poetry gets Christmas-y. In the meantime, today’s poem started with two lines that came to me while sitting in another long commute home.
“Everything you knew
fell away.”
I jotted those lines on my phone and let them be. Then one morning this week I woke up with a strange weariness. In order to get rid of my weariness I found myself writing this poem, allowing the words to spill out. Only editing a few days after having written it all out.
Thanks Tara for hosting today’s Poetry Friday over at A Teaching Life. Hope you enjoy this bit of original poetry.
Weary Bones
by Iphigene
Weary bones,
everything you knew
fell away.
Where do you go,
pushed against a rock,
sharp edges digging
into your boney back?
Like knots knotting
into chains, rising from the pit
of your gut to your choked
throat.Weary bones,
where do you go
when misery finds you?
Have you not enough
when life gobbled you
into its greedy dark mouth
flinging acid to burn you.
Weary bones, have you
not paid your due?
Must you soak up life’s spite
open arms, pouring itself
into your murmuring heart
filling your marrow with
another’s pain. Weary bones,
had you not enough?
Lovely, weary bones
Where do you go when
the dark hallway closes down
on you, cornering you in despair
boxed in with the weight
of the world’s problem?
Do you find reprieve from life’s
constant battering?
“Nowhere else, but
forward.” She whispers
in the darkness, with a voice
that whispers a smile
at the edges of her lips.
Gathering Books 
Iphigene, the poem you built around those lines speaks to me of refugees who have been gobbled by life and whose bones surely are weary. The young woman in your drawing has haunting eyes that have seen pain, but her resolute mouth says, “Nowhere else but forward.” Wonderful poem! Thanks for sharing.
LikeLike
Hi joyce, thank you.
LikeLike
It’s a pouring out, I imagine this as spoken word, Iphigene, a voice that certainly is heard by me when I see others troubled. And there is no other way but forward. That “whispers a smile” is lovely.
LikeLike
Hi Linda,
I wrote this while saying the lines and the energy i got from saying them, so i’m glad it translated as something that could be spoken word. Will consider translating this to such.
LikeLike
Love the strength in this.
LikeLiked by 1 person