The Bones Are Good
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
It turns out
you can lose the fruit
and still keep the tree.
For a long time,
I thought rot was inheritance.
That what spoiled closest to me
was proof of what I came from—
that decay was destiny,
and blood meant burden.
I was wrong.
Because when I followed the line back—
past the bruised branches,
past the blighted yield—
I found something older
and far more durable.
Roots.
Wide.
Intertwined.
Running deep beneath the noise
of one small, sour corner
that mistook itself
for the whole orchard.
There is laughter here
that doesn’t flinch.
Stories told without sharp edges.
Hands that reach
without calculating the cost.
This is blood that remembers
how to hold one another.
An abundance of names.
An excess of warmth.
A sprawling, untidy, generous lineage
that knows how to gather,
how to circle up,
how to make room.
No one here needs control
to feel important.
No one mistakes cruelty
for strength.
The fruit that failed—
that shriveled on the branch,
that poisoned its own shade—
was never the truth of the tree.
It was an aberration.
A localized sickness
mistaken for structure.
But the bones—
the bones are good.
They carry endurance,
not entitlement.
Care,
not conquest.
And standing among them now,
I can feel it—
the relief of recognition.
The quiet certainty
that I was never meant
to come from rot alone.
I come from roots
that know how to grow.
From a family that expands
instead of contracts.
That nourishes
instead of consumes.
Whatever withered
where I began
does not get to define
where I belong.
The bones are good.
And I am finally home
inside them.
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