The Osteology of the Soul: Have You Ever Broken a Bone?

Have you ever broken a bone?
Not just cracked a femur or shattered a wrist—
I mean, really broken.
Snapped a promise wrapped in cartilage,
Or dislocated a truth in the marrow of your soul?
That kind of break. The spiritual X-ray.
The fracture they don't wrap in plaster.
Tell me.
Have you?

I remember a time
when I stubbed my toe on love.
It wasn’t bleeding, but my laugh bent awkwardly
like a rib cage caught in an avalanche of wrong words.
And yet, nobody gave me crutches
for the way I limped through the next five years.

No doctor for the moments when
someone left and took a piece of spine with them.
You ever try to sit straight in the memory of someone
who called you “forever”
and left in March?

I met a girl once—her name was Clavicle.
She wore necklaces like confessionals,
like she was hiding every time
she’d been dropped
and caught herself on hope.
She told me:
"My collarbone cracked during a trust fall."
Not in gym class—
in a conversation where silence fell too fast,
too hard, too much.
The air didn’t catch her.

Have you ever broken a bone in your belief system?
Split a kneecap kneeling before
a god who no longer listens?
I did once.
And no amount of rosary beads or scripture scans
could identify the hairline fissure
running through my faith.

Some people think pain has a volume.
Like it gets louder when the injury is visible.
But let me tell you something—
there’s a scream that lives in the tibia
of someone who’s forced to walk away
while still wanting to stay.
And that scream is silent.
It echoes in soft tissues and dinner tables
and the pages of unread messages.

You don’t need a cast for that.

One day,
my patience broke.
It didn’t make a sound.
No ambulance.
Just a slow erosion—like the sea
chewing on a cliff
until all that’s left is
a splintered silence and loose rocks.
I tried to tape it up with affirmations.
“You’re strong.”
“You’ve got this.”
But you can’t duct-tape a hurricane.

Once I met a man who broke his voice.
Didn’t raise it for years
because his father broke it first.
Every shout swallowed.
Every tear told to “man up.”
He speaks now in apologies.
His tongue is a splint.
Every syllable a surgery.

Have you ever broken
the calendar of your dreams?
Woken up and realized the days don’t add up anymore?
That you’re thirty-seven
and still writing poems
when you should have been an astronaut
or a father
or something solid?
That kind of break—
a compound collision of expectation and reality.

Some breaks aren’t sudden.
They erode.
Like how your back curves
from carrying ancestral trauma.
The scoliosis of a history
you didn’t choose but still carry
in your posture,
in your habits,
in your fear of becoming your mother.

I broke my sense of direction once.
Not north-south-east-west—
but purpose.
I took a wrong turn at “should have”
and fell into a decade of detours.
I wore maps like coats.
Asked strangers for guidance in the form of kisses.
No GPS for the heart.

Sometimes, I think babies come into this world
already cracked.
Born with broken ribs
from trying to fit their infinite spirits
into a finite body.
That’s why they cry.
Their first protest.
A wail of becoming.

Have you ever broken time?
Like—sat in a moment so heavy
it cracked the clock?
Like grief did that Tuesday in September
or joy did the day you first touched someone
and they didn’t flinch?
Time fractures like glass
when you realize it isn’t coming back.

I once met an old woman
whose ankles whispered sonnets.
Said they broke during the war.
Not from bombs—
but from running toward someone
who never came back.
She walks with grace now.
You can’t tell.
But she limps in her lullabies.

There’s a man down my street
who talks to pigeons
like they’re therapists.
I asked him why.
He said, “Birds don’t judge the way I cracked
when I lost her.”
His femur still works.
But his mornings?
Crushed.

Not all breaks are bad.
Some are necessary.
Like the snap of a glow stick
before it glows.
Or the crack in the egg
before it nourishes.
Or the split in the sky
before it rains.

I broke my silence once.
It hurt.
It bled metaphors.
But from that break, a poem limped out—
missing a shoe,
but still dancing.

So again I ask:
Have you ever broken a bone?
Not just the skeletal scaffolding—
But the intangible structures.
The ones no MRI can see.
The bones of belief,
of identity,
of hope.
Have you?

If yes,
let’s build a museum together—
a gallery of fractured dreams
and healing hands.
Call it:
The Osteology of the Soul.

And in the center,
a plaque that reads:
“Sometimes the breaks make us see the light within.”