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"Sixteen elephant days

may not be enough

be sure, be sure."



But he was not sure

for he did not measure his minutes well.

And so the skeleton boy

broke apart

at the poolside one day.

He came unstacked.

He fell into a million little

brittle pieces.



They took

all that they could take,

merciless crooks, rabid scavengers.

They each picked a rib.

One nabbed the spine.

I made off with the wishbone myself.

And then,

he was nothing.

You see, he'd been giving his flesh away

bit by bit

every day, for years

like a fruit stand.

He had figured that

it wasn't much of a waste

because he had always retained

his framework, his pretty bones.

They were his trophies,

ivory coated and well arranged.

His body became

a walking anatomy lesson.

And whenever he was ravaged

or racked by his loneliness,

more and more of the skeleton

shone through.



Now, there were other people

in the world of the skeleton boy.

Prim, proper and precise.

Lepers of a different flesh.

They sucked up all the marrow

like sharks out of water

leasing elephant days to the hungry

like a sacrament.



To him these others seemed

so ripe and fragrant

so well-stacked and strong

so feastily tasty.

It was unnatural,

like a well groomed heresy.

For it was they who

were feeding off of him.



Relentlessly, they tore apart

his skeletal world.

He had only wanted

to hide among the structures.

But they exploited this eagerness,

milking him dry

making him play

a circus freak.

"Step right up, ladies and gents!"



Foolishly he had invited them

to all of his pool parties

forgetting that he owed them

sixteen elephant days.

He'd been on all of their lists.

But he could not fend them off

when they came to make him pay

when the clowns came collecting one day.



They wanted the very meat

off of his bones;

but he had nothing left to give.

So, the skeleton boy shrunk back

surrendering to their cannibal will.

He could not cough up a femur or skull

anymore.

He could not pay them enough.

He could never ever pay them

enough.