Diane LeBlanc
SPINE
I wrecked mine one summer in rural New Hampshire trying to load a rotary tiller in my truck before the rental place closed, because another day would have cost me seed and manure, and the whole point was to grow my own food. Eventually I’d work with a physical therapist who sat a replica of the human spine on his lap like a ventriloquist dummy while comparing bulging discs to jelly donuts, throwing at me the whole story of human deterioration bone by bone. Since then, I’ve been obsessed with spines. Did you know that both humans and giraffes have seven neck vertebrae? Before the farm and the wreck, I was a teacher in Wyoming. I fed my bones beer and lettuce. When the isolation was too much, I’d go to the geology museum to confide in the apatosaurus skeleton patched together with fossil bones and casts of missing pieces. In this mirror of my own extinction, I saw pain scaled up, what bones alone don’t say.