The Skin of the Story

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Three of her children were taken:  

one whispered  
out of life by a flapping heart,  

one stoned in the head by a tumor,  

one catapulted through a windshield  
into the hereafter.  

Unable to pierce God, to fathom  
his depths, she bargained for the others: 

If you need a life, take mine. Then came 

disintegrating veins,  
her feet roped, 
swollen purple; 

the fall in Mexico, no words  
to tell the doctor  
he set the unbroken leg;  

threatened blindness,  
the chiseling of her eye sockets; 

replacement of her color 
by a blankness one  
brain cell at a time.  

This is the skin of the story  
that held her together:  

six children prospered.  

When she broke her neck  
on the stairs 
after her last child’s wedding,  

she believed she had cracked  
God’s code:  
what he meant by  
marrow  

in the bones.