Growing Bones by Saaleha Idrees Bamjee

First soft and unknit
to mould through mothers
to begin this work
of hardening frame
growing upwards
to fall free when six
from the top of the world, fracturing fear
and breaking in three places
casting a school-term in plaster
scribbled on in fruit-scented markers.

Bones, I drink to your strength.
The milk, always, in tall glasses
good for glugging in one go
and skillful lickings
of wet-white mustaches after.

Under stretched-out bras and holy panties,
I scribble bones into perfumed diaries
that close with a heart-shaped lock
pickable with a paper clip.
Bones, you make good backs
built to bend
under the weight of adolescence
and spring up
when
the world becomes
ready
for a woman.

Saaleha Bamjee is a freelance writer based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is interested in food pornography, paper-crafts and poems about secrets. She blogs at www.saaleha.com