Originally published in Reed Magazine, Issue 151

Birdbath 

I have a dip in my sternum. It is genetic—

pectus excavatum. A doctor told me,

“If rainwater can collect in it,

you have that condition.” (Rainwater

has never collected in it.) I have

heard if your thumbs bend

back, you may have a rare

joint syndrome. If your heart

beats thunk-whoosh-thunk,

you may have to worry,

but thunk-thunk-whoosh

is fine. I told a friend

about the dip, the valley in bone

like the flourished curve at the end

of a violin bow. He shook his head.

“Deformities disgust me,” he said,

himself an EMT, who only last week

raised riven bodies onto stretchers

along the highway all night,

their injuries making them

all different like figures

in a topiary garden. They left

as the sun rose. My injury came slow

and easy, in most ways, as though

I was falling down a flight of stairs

with many months between each step

to see the damage. The sun rose on it

often. “Bedridden” is such a queasy word,

steeped in sickness—someone ridden

with bed-ness, infested: with sleep,

with vertigo, with a heartbeat

insistent as an echoing bell making waves

through your limbs. Sometimes,

with my eyes closed, shifting from

one sore hip onto the other,

I finger the curve of the sternum dip. It is

the footprint of a rabbit, a lucky indent,

a bauble given by a friend. This little

magic trick, I need it: how a body

like mine can contain also this thing,

something so plainly, harmlessly wrong.