Smoothed stone, round hard knob of a bunion. Feet encased in their own slippers of flesh. The faded star of a mole high up on my thigh, a smaller one adrift at the outer corner of my left eye. Once, a fortune teller counted lines on the edge of my palm to call forth daughters. Once, I doubled over in the shower to mourn the one who didn’t stay. Those that folded their wings when they came into this world make their own constellations now; they still remember me. Early mornings and late nights, I practice rolling the gathered weight in my belly into an orb— the hardest lesson: letting it down to rest in knee-deep grass. * In March I'd sent this in to a call for "poems about age" but it didn't make the cut...
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.