While There’s Life In My Bones: Scibilia’s Anthem for Rabbit Mountain’s Lovers

Music Monday 10: a song for the final hours (includes slight spoilers)

I placed Jude and Brett’s story deliberately near the novel’s conclusion, knowing their eleventh-hour connection would carry particular weight. As readers rush toward the inevitable with my characters, Marc Scibilia’s “Life In My Bones” captures exactly what I wanted to convey through their brief, intense relationship—that beauty exists precisely because of transience, not in spite of it.

The Urgency of Now

Throughout When The Trees All Burned, I built toward a reckoning with time. While Rajiv counted down years, then months, then days, my characters each faced their own personal timelines. Nobody embodies this urgency more than Jude and Brett, who meet with the hour already late, the sand already running thin.

Scibilia’s lyrics, with their frantic cross-country flights and midnight escapes, mirror this compression of time. There’s no waiting until tomorrow, no “someday soon.” When Brett arrives at Rabbit Mountain, his van equipped for either salvation or self-destruction, he’s already wrung out his somedays. When he accepts coffee from Jude’s hands, it’s with the implicit understanding that this cup might be the last.

I wanted their morning ritual—two folding chairs, steam rising from mugs, conversation that deepens with each passing day—to embody Scibilia’s promise to love “with what’s left in my bones.” There's no pretense of eternity, only the fierce dedication to this moment, right now.

Seizing What Remains

“Picked your flowers in Arkansas / Broke the law for you” —this opening line speaks to the audacity of choosing connection even when circumstances dictate otherwise. I wrote Brett and Jude to make this same choice, to reach for each other even at the world’s edge.

Their relationship confronts readers with a question I wanted central to the novel: if tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, what becomes essential today? They answer not with frantic bucket-list adventures but with something quieter and more profound—authentic presence.

When Brett says his shadow has lifted through Jude’s eyes, he’s acknowledging transformation that needs no lengthy timeline to matter. When Jude allows herself vulnerability despite years of careful independence, she’s recognizing that waiting for perfect conditions means waiting forever.

The Illumination of Limitation

What connects the song most profoundly to their story is the way limitation creates illumination. Because their time is bounded, every gesture between them carries weight. The coffee Brett doesn’t finish, the way Jude’s camera lens lingers on his face, their bodies finally finding each other in the RV—each moment glows with significance precisely because it cannot be repeated indefinitely.

I structured their narrative to arrive when readers already understand what’s coming. This wasn’t to create hopelessness but rather to highlight the courage required to reach toward connection anyway. When Scibilia sings about being “the place that you call home,” he’s not offering forever—he’s offering now, completely.

The Persistence of Witness

The Saint Jude pendant hanging in the RV serves as witness to their fleeting connection, much as Scibilia’s lyrics suggest something will remain “while there’s life in my bones.” The fireproof safe containing Jude’s testimony speaks to our human impulse to preserve what matters, even knowing preservation itself is temporary.

I wanted readers to understand through their story that meaning doesn’t require permanence. Brett’s transformation from isolation to connection stands complete whether it lasts decades or hours. Jude’s choice to truly see him rather than just document him represents a fully lived moment, regardless of what follows.

Carpe Momentum

In the end, Scibilia’s “Life In My Bones” serves as perfect accompaniment to what Jude and Brett discover together: that “seizing the day” isn’t about grand gestures but about removing the barriers between ourselves and authentic experience. It’s about recognizing that the bone-deep truth of connection exists independent of its duration.

Their story, arriving as it does at the novel’s precipice, reminds us that waiting for the perfect moment often means waiting forever. Tomorrow makes no promises—it never has. The only guarantee is this present breath, this present heartbeat, this chance to recognize ourselves in the eyes of another.

In this understanding lies the most profound form of shelter we can offer one another: the courage to be fully present before the clock runs out.