On Breaking

i. The ones made of glass

Occam weekends with us.
Light fancies us.
We preen with only seeming
to be solid,
make friends with sinew
in our folly.

We break but never bend.

We will cut you by accident if we do,
nothing personal. We simply speak in slivers
of silverlight, severing thin selves that flake like flint,
shiv down to muscle in a breath.

ii. We, the sinewed,

see and receive
these severing splinters
as we must,
without resistance.

Points of origin glide among
the warm ranges of the body.
The brittle, cold ways
of glass are strange—
Our closest knowing is bone,
which breaks like green branches,
fibrous and wet, not clean
like Occam's pets.

We grab and thrust
and pull against,
make all movement
into archery, flex and launch,
flex and launch

We bend until we break.