What is god but the healed clavicle collaring of
statuesque posture. You stand tall to the ache you
were born with, that existential lagging to belong,
connect. God gives you bones to articulate like
runes, an alphabet of protrusions, bumps, grooves,
chronicling attachment, fracture, fusing of bone with
momentum. You feel for the finger bowl at the base
of your throat. God is the squared-off shoulders,
the press of three fingers at the fluent hollow,
the strut of two bones on the catwalk of becoming.
God is the plush of velveteen pulse, the smooth nap
of what perceives as lovely, the high-stepping susceptibility,
the suture of windpipe and breastplate. God is the thin-
skinned vulnerability, the body notched with soul.

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Tori Grant Welhouse is a poet and novelist from the Midwest with an award-winning poetry chapbook Vaginas Need Air, and a prize-winning YA fantasy novel The Fergus. Her poems have appeared most recently in Crab Orchard Review, Red River Review, and Cloudbank. More at www.torigrantwelhouse.com.

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