their wide hips gave off the odor of the sea and of milk

The first time Deserter 28 witnessed the permanent transmission of lethal force his bones turned to gas. Only the bones and some of their confidants understood this. Some of the confidants worried to excess that this meant 28 was fucked. In fact because of the high engineering standards to which we hold our bones and bone accessories, gasbone is not an immediate threat to safe use of a deserter. But what the bones and deserters still do not readily understand is that gasbone is a serious and lifelong medical condition that has to be understood and coaxed along, fretted over to a sufficient volume. Swallowing jagged life or even unimportant gang tackles for mediocre football teams incurs a risk of puncture. We might live with a leak, just like we might live on after a failed love affair in which it turns out we both only ever hated ourselves and that was enough to draw us together in a photonegative of desire. In both cases there is a slow trickle inside you. At first you don’t know, at second you don’t mind, at integers greater than or equal to three you can taste your own bones on your breath. They disappear into a wind that hardly cares what those bones ever meant to you. Not because the wind is a dick, but because there aren’t enough hours in the day to not be a dick in every way to everyone.