Telophase

In the archive, soldiers walk the spine
of a country pulled apart. Y-posts rise
like wishbones planted upside down,
luck buried deep in frozen ground.
My grandmother says: we last spoke
in 1950. Now I wake wondering
if she wakes at all. Forty years
of mornings I can't imagine—
does she still braid her hair left to right?
Between them, these forked prayers stand—
each post a mother's clavicle
snapped, waiting for sons
to pull from either side.
January's hand redraws the fence
in ink: a thousand chances
to break toward each other,
a thousand ways to name
this distance home.