Bones

Bones are the basics. Long after the rest of a body is gone, the bones remain; hard white fragments outline the person that once was. In forensics, even the least of these slivers of a past life can indicate how life was lived and how life was lost.

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Having my nose broken marks the most intense pain I've ever felt in my life. Not the breaking, but the resetting. The doctor took the bridge of my nose between his first two knuckles and cracked it back into place without warning. I'll never forget the sound of bone grinding against bone or the shocking pain - so immense, I made no sound.

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Bones make up the skeleton - the framework of the body. We never think of it, this complex matrix deep inside other layers. Each bone fits to the next and so on - the leg bone's connected to the foot bone - each one, no matter how tiny, has a purpose. We never consider how essential it is - how it holds us up, holds us together.

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For ages, whalebone was used in corsets to shape the body. The unforgiving bones molded new curves, nipped the ribcage and waist, accentuated the hips. Bones, always giving shape from the inside, created an opposite reaction on the outside, a rescultped form the result of these forces.

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To cut one to the bone is to say that one shears through the tender flesh and strikes the very core.

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Bone is slang for domino and dice, likely because the earliest forms of these gamepieces were carved from said substance. These bones are a risk, a gamble - a smooth white game of chance.

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Make no bones about it - let's get to the point.

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At the heart of the bone is the marrow. And from the marrow comes new blood cells. Bone bears blood and feeds the veins circuiting around it.

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And so digging deeply down to the bone to find the traces of who you were and who you are, of what holds you up and holds you together, cutting past the flesh and into the rigid hollows of bone, it's no surprise that there's blood there. That getting to the bone, so unyielding, lets out a little of the life that's in there.