Somewhere between a poem and an internal monologue, “loose triptych” is a contemplation of life, life beyond life, and the meaning in it all. (“What is a legacy?” “Planting seeds in a garden you will never see in full bloom”, to paraphrase; but also to cite a late night conversation, “Before you’re trying to be something, make sure to be.” I find that I’m often stuck on the conundrum of that maybe-false-maybe-true dichotomy of person / artist — I want to leave a legacy as a writer, an inheritance for those I will become a forebear to, yet I am painfully aware that I must prioritize being, which always feels so strange and so selfish, somehow, on both accounts. I have reconciled that jag somewhat through this piece: I needn’t be anything more than I am now, yet I want to. And hopefully that’s an okay and fine want to have.)

The writing is juxtaposed over pages I have extracted from Andrew Francis Dixon’s Manual of Human Osteology, published 1912. I thought that since I’m using the bones as narrators, actual anatomical illustrations of major bones (the sternum, which sustains the thoracic cavity and thus shields the viscera; the skull, which houses the brain, the soul; the femur, a sort of pail-bearer of the body) would add a layer to it, particularly since genetic inheritance is passed so greatly through osseous tissue and that’s where I keep my ancestors, and where I will, hopefully, one day be in turn kept by some bright writer of similarly dubious coherence. I would be so proud.

I suppose it is more a “melancholy for a future that has yet to pass, but which may become lost.”

Lianna Schreiber is a Romanian author. A self-described “Neoromantic,” her work mostly concerns itself with human nature, mythological and folkloric truth as well as tradition, and the most defiant of emotions — love. She can be found @ ragewrites on tumblr.