Connect the Dots

High up on my left thigh, a brown mole,
its tint muted by time. I used to wonder
if this could be listed as one of my
"identifying features"— what's meant 
when describing the shape of your nose,
how your brows arch or careen to the left 
while the other lies inert as a tent 
that could never be raised. Most 
of the time I forget it's even there. 
Not something to register, stepping out 
of the shower and toweling off. My mother 
had moles across her back— a page out of 
connect-the-dots coloring books like the ones
she bought so I could amuse myself and never
be bored. Connect the dots, from one to ten 
to fifty to almost a hundred, the age she 
would have been had she not passed away 
at ninety. After I gave birth to my first
child, she handed me a warmed-up cup
of coconut oil to stroke across my
belly. For the stretch marks, she said.
For helping speed up the skin's snapping
back to the state it was before it
was marked by life, if I was lucky.