The X-ray Keeps an Earlier Bone

What if the X-ray plate doesn't capture the break, but the shape the bone insists it still is. Beneath the visible fracture, a faint double line: the old contour, unbroken, pressed into the silver grains like a habit the body refuses to unlearn. The radiologist calls it artifact, adjusts the exposure, tries again. The shadow persists. Perhaps every bone keeps a ledger of its former self, filed somewhere between marrow and light, and the machine only photographs the argument between what happened and what the skeleton still believes about itself. The cast goes on. Underneath, two shapes negotiate in the dark.