**Angles, Tones, and Bones**

In the ditch today among the autumn leaves like a rat—
Such an earthy folk who can’t seem to be drawn
to the right things; they go in their own way together—
There was a human body splayed catastrophically across
smelling of old death and rot—it was putrid; I felt the need
that I’d get out for sake of my air when the sound came.
Nearly as quietly as echoes I myself could ever dare to release
it came upon the road and stopped and waited.
With my baited breath we together were in this stench and
I couldn’t move, all the bones stood still among us forced
with good reason to be there and stay quiet—now alone together.
.
My heart was lifted only some small measure when the painted dog
with his posture indicated in the subtlest of terms a sense
of not wanton rage as I would have presupposed but instead
bare hand outstretched somehow knowing we were all there together.
We exposed our bones towards one another and nodded grimly
and I asked him in my shameful foreign tongue of angles
which tongue he spoke most fluently. And at first he cocked his head
sideways, upon which an expression of confusion rode across.
Nervously I began to repeat myself, this time in my broken tones
so long since unused, trapped in this red land—
By humans like that which here lay among the autumn leaves.
His ears perked up and he answered *“I will speak in tones, Reid-ta.
For I see yours are choked dry by those who took this land,”*  his arm
extended, our gaze directed to those autumn leaves.
Yes, for the first time—I breathed.