Truth be told, I have a little secret.
I fractured my collarbone when I was four
(but this isn’t the little secret)
A fracture with that placement doesn’t require a cast, but rather a sling to adjust and keep the bones aligned. It’s an anti-climatic remedy.
When I mentioned this to my friends, they confessed that they wished to have broken something as a child, like an arm, maybe a leg.
I thought they were crazy. But it’s a common thought apparently, or so I’m told. A cast is the fun performance of your pain. You can make it blue or pink or yellow or red and then have people line up to sign it even if they don’t care about your ailment. They won’t want to know the difference between a broken bone and a fracture.
I have this secret in which I sometimes pretend I almost drowned and maybe that’s why I’m scared of water. I think that’s easier to explain, don’t you think?
Or maybe I’ll imagine that my grandfather died across some foreign land and in return, I’m looking for a way to come home. But I swim just fine and grandpa passed last spring.
I try to take all the hurt and make a new one instead of holding on to the one I already have. It’s used and dirty and quite frankly I’m tired; I don’t want it anymore and it’s not a cast you’d like to sign either way.
You once told me that birds can fly because their bones are hollow. That they’re not meant to weigh them down and they’re not meant to be broken
And between you and me I sometimes wish this grief was a bird with hollow bones.
I swear to God I’d set it free.