Our bones used to be the same

By Heleana Bakopoulos

PROMPT — If only ...

Fish, teething filleted fish

of yesterday on a bed of blueberries,

with purple fingertips and

spider legs, penetrating denim grain.

We fled from wasps we

stopped each other under the canopy

and made a map on a tree stump,

termites of skinned knees.

I burnt my forearms by the fire I

couldn’t feel my legs under fleece,

wet because snow never stays frozen

as long as I think it will.

We preferred nectarines to peaches

and I didn’t watch the salmon be

scaled from tail to gill but

I made up a game on the beach.

We stopped each other and never

We only ever harmonized about it

with the mark of the woods carved into us,

tracing a maze into our limbs.

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Heleana Bakopoulos is a student of English and Classical Studies at Whitman College. She writes from Seward, AK.