1. Our ends and edges start as cartilage

    you fold, we bend, nothing clatters when we fall, collagen like rubber erasers scored with graphite tips, speared by paperclips bent and unwound as limbs sway from broken bodies on mountaintops, picked clean by turkey vultures

  2. We sell our softness for mineral deposits

    ossifying from the center outward; it sneaks in, spongy bone we thought could absorb our calculated falls

  3. Because you said we shaped our future

    we fell from the sky down, caught in the opening between trampoline springs, thinking maybe it could twist through blankets of skin, stretch and warp and pretzel ourselves

  4. We only hardened

    bound as calcium hydroxyapatite, matrix mineralization impenetrable to your grip, length predetermined, creeping toward their ends until even those slivers of cartilage stiffened, petrified, as though we’d rather freeze than reach further in the same direction