Christine A. MacKenzie is a student of English, creative writing, and psychology at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She is a crisis counselor and a writer. In the future she plans to become a psychotherapist and continue to write. She has recently been published in The Inflectionist Review, Xylem, The Merrimack Review, and Fourteen Hills.

The Wishbone

all the branches spread above our heads
fork into furculas wooden wishbones
in soil adrift lost to the birds consumed
remnants of bone fall upwards in the ether

to dried bird bones calcified in flesh
reborn in memories knock on wood
cracked for children to clash over
who will win break off the larger piece

do we break clavicles for luck
to fall to pieces or fall into place
divine fusion in marriage of bones
because equal doesn’t exist

man and woman pretend pain
on their backs means earned wings
similar to the ache before white tooth
surfaces but tailbones hurt and never
have I ever sprouted a tail

after the baked goose picked clean
the bones are discarded except for
the wishbone: my love, you won’t
battle me over a bone, will you?

nonetheless our bones remain
in the section we marked in stone
tumbled into the shallow soils
because our dreams cannot end.