Body Stories

a tiny red dot on my belly button
as if I accidentally dropped
my red grading pen
on the very spot

a mole, like the top of a new pencil eraser
on my right shoulder
a birthmark, I am told

freckles on my right thigh that when connected  
(and I've done it often)
make the Big Dipper

a white raised scar like the edge of a thumbnail
on the inside of my right thigh
cat tooth or cat claw- a feline catastrophe
in the parking lot of the Humane Society
on a hot summer day in 1976

skin rubbed raw on my right hip
by asphalt
between being flung from a bike
and being stopped by a tree
it grew back like a piece of porcelain
a smooth alabaster oval
its companion is located on my right elbow

scar tissue on the right side of my scalp
(from the same fall)
feels like a golf pencil surgically implanted
beneath my hair

a divot on my forehead just below the hairline
looks as though someone might have
put a cigarette out there
I assure you
it was only the dresser drawer
slightly pulled out
catching my fall on my way down

a faint arc across my left knuckles
from Tremon
the kindergarten student who
I caught eating crayons under the table
and who decided
it would be better to scratch and kick and bite
his teacher than to stop eating the crayons

below that and to the right
near the base of my thumb
mark the places where my hand met a wire fence
while walking my dog- now long gone
she saw a squirrel and took off
the leash wrapped tightly around my wrist
an unexpected game of crack the whip

a freckle on the second toe
of my right foot
a toe that's slightly longer
than its neighbor to the left
and its neighbor to the right
a sign of beauty, my mother used to say
and I believed her
at age 5

and then there are the places
that are smooth
unmarked
showing no evidence of a story
a change
a defining moment
an incident to remember

like the place
where a baby grows