The Bone Dance by Lucy Whitehead

Tell me of your life 
as I brush the dust
from your eye sockets, 
carefully cataloguing 
your curving limbs. 
The way your body 
held itself, even in death. 
The way your bones dance
in the earth, mud-stained,
the expression of all 
your experiences. 
All you have loved and felt,
all you have been, 
now fallen away. 
Sing to me softly
the last shreds of your self, 
before they are scattered 
forever.

(Inspired by my experience of excavating and reconstructing skeletons at the neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey in the seasons from 1997 to 1999.)

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Lucy Whitehead has a BA in Archaeology from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Art History and Archaeology from SOAS University of London. Her poetry has recently been published or is forthcoming in Broken Spine Artist Collective, Burning House Press, Clover and White Literary Magazine, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Mookychick Magazine, 3 Moon Magazine, Parentheses Journal, Pink Plastic House, Pussy Magic, and Re-side. She lives by the sea with her husband and cat. You can find her on Twitter @blueirispoetry.