good bones

the necessity of learning to love a little bit more

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: this place could be beautiful,

right? you could make this place beautiful.

     — Maggie Smith, ‘Good Bones’

Lately, I’ve been preoccupied with the simple stuff. Life has become about the myriad of loveable things and, in turn, become about me loving them.

I kept having the same dream throughout this past summer; I was living by the sea, just under the cliffs of the beach I used to spend every childhood summer at. In this dream, I would wake every morning in some Austenesque cottage in a single bed with cerulean sheets, and I’d watch through the four-paned window as the morning fog rolled into the waves. Later, the dream would flash, and my ankles would be dipped into the cool Southern Ocean. In that small universe the only thing I ever was, or ever felt I could be, was happy. It stays with me as one of my more potent dreams—especially for an aphantasic—mostly for its ability to invoke such emotion in me from something so small. Something so ‘boring.’

The beach featured in my dream — Anglesea Cliffs and Health by Peter Smales

I’m a firm believer that poetry is up to individual interpretation, regardless of authorial intent. So, for me, Maggie Smith’s poem ‘Good Bones’ is about the necessity of making peace with all the horrible parts of our great big planet. And beyond making peace, it’s about finding something(s) to love within it. When I read the poem, I get the feeling that the type of love that she has found is small and intimate, much like mine. Recently I’ve been noticing those small things—the ‘good bones’—more often. Some of my favourites include:

1. The meshing of an empty night bus and a carefully curated music playlist  

2. The checkerboard tiles on my kitchen and bathroom floor

3. Going to the grocery store at 7:00pm on a Wednesday

4. The dried flowers on my windowsill

5. Walking home from work in the rain at night

6. The trees outside my bedroom window

Perhaps now I am just simply more aware of all the more ‘boring’ things in life. Four months ago I moved away from my family and into a small apartment with my best friend. I always thought that the freedom would be what I would love most about living on my own, but it’s really just the small everyday mundanities within it. I love how we both sit in the living room and write in silence until after midnight, and the way we seem to take turns offering each other cups of tea. Maybe it’s just comfort that I love, but that can be another type of freedom itself.

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Throughout high school, I found myself preoccupied with all the bad things on this planet. As a self-proclaimed ‘internet child’ my daily free time was spent online— particularly in the thrall of YouTube—and it’s easy for the internet to make the world feel like it’s approaching a never-ending doomsday, or that we’re all living in it already. The badness in the world was as true for me as ‘Good Bones’ says it to be.

The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate,

So, I compensated and instead desired a grandiose existence for myself, for in my tiny little body I did not believe that the bad could be outweighed. I think I’ve seen the world end in all the ways possible. I’ve probably dreamed of them too. But once, I think I felt it really end; not in that doomed way, but as if I was undergoing some ineffable rebirth. I was sat, alone, on the grassy embankment of the Yarra River in Melbourne. I had my hand half dipped into some McDonalds fries, and a bottle of soju beside me. It was not as glorious a moment as the poets say these things to be. But in my reminiscence I could see my memories within this city; I saw hope floating between the skyline and all the bad bones turned good.

I think that maybe making room in my heart for smaller things is the real growing I must do as I get older. To see life’s ‘good bones’, yes, but as is key in Smith’s poem; to still know the bad. I know that I still read the news too often, and that I’m obsessed with being right. I know that I should stop telling everyone about the probability of another war, or of a new virus cropping up somewhere far from this isolated island. But I wonder too, should I really stop these things? Do they not just make me more aware—a better person even? All the good bones can be bad bones, and all the bad bones, good. Life just feels like a terrible partner on the old see-saw. And look, I don’t think I’ll ever know the truth of it, and I don’t doubt that I’ll float between change and reversion.

Maybe I was right when I was younger; that my tiny miracles cannot outweigh the atrocities we are so often exposed to. But recently, there have been many days in which I’ve woken up just past eight in the morning, I’ve smelt the autumn air and truly believed that my life was on track for the first time. And I really do think that I was right every morning, and that I’ll continue to be.

The world has good bones, and I’m beginning to love them as I should.