My bones and teeth will be the only testament that I ever lived,
and even they'll be gone one day, too.
Never a broken bone in my life (so far)
but bones nonetheless warped by a life of being fat.
Careworn and abused in turns by my passage through the years.
Telltale signs of maleness, European-ness, American-ness;
all the bad chemicals I've accumulated.
Teeth ground down by anxiety, even as a child
milling my brand-new permanent teeth until I came to realize it was "wrong"
The stained and pitted teeth of a habitular soda-drinker
(a reminder of my uncle's teeth, rotten from years of neglect)
This rack of calcium and phosphorus that I have had the privilege of swaddling:
This is what I think about at night, when I cannot sleep.
My bones existing long after I am gone,
A pitiful relic deposited into this blue-green world
as she grinds her yearly track around the sun
Year after year after year, circling and circling
Bones crumbling to baser elements
Until I'm nothing but atoms, and everything again.
I'll be lucky to have 70 years
And I'm still wasting every day