Partly Revealed

If I look close enough
in the mirror
I see softly trampled lines
leading from my eyes,
so many tired circuits
relaying books read,
poems written,
tears shed.

Closer still, lines
surround my lips,
carved canyons of past belly
laughs, false and true,
of smiles held for you,
child’s play, day lilies
before they spend themselves
in sweltering summer sun.

If I dropped my robe,
I could touch the crescent
scar under the clavicle,
left from dog’s teeth;
the roughened skin
that failed to take
after the burn ran us
from the farm; the
indent, too small to see
by the aureole but
certain to touch, souvenir
of the biopsy; or the cleft
beneath where once
I linked to my own mother,
where son, then daughter
bellowed forth.

The mirror tells all;
these things I witness,
map of my life, meager, full.

I wonder - do you see my same history?



***

Prompt: Partly ________



Peace, Linda