SET THE BONE by Jillian Stacia

SET THE BONE

My great-grandmother fell off the roof
and broke her leg when she was six.
It would’ve been easier if you just died,

her mother said. A fractured leg
was a week’s worth of breakfast.
Hospitals are expensive. So are daughters.

Decades later, I still feel the throbbing
of that story. The ache locked inside
the ligament. The way it tenses in the rain.

Is it any wonder she ran into the shelter of a man
returning from war? Didn’t notice the blood
on his hands till she slid on a ring

and recognized the view from that old roof,
the sky another shade of the same bruised blue.
No one ever heals.

We don’t think to count the cracks,
the small breaks
that make up the women who raise us.

If a mother is a mirror, then the glass
is always cracked. All we see
is our warped reflection,

the twisted way we learn to weather.
Grind our teeth. Set the bone.
Every daughter throws stones

from the glasshouse her mother built.
I hold these legacies inside my hips.
I feel each storm before it falls.

Tell me, who among us doesn’t walk with a limp?

*

Jillian Stacia is the author of the upcoming poetry collection, SET THE BONE, published by Arcana Poetry Press. She was selected as an Honorable Mention for the 2025 Jack McCarthy Book Prize and short-listed for the 2026 Central Avenue Poetry Prize. She has been nominated for several awards, including 2025 Best of Net and the 2025 Pushcart Prize. Her poetry has been featured in several literary magazines and anthologies. Find her online @jillianstacia to read more of her work.