Maps

My skin curls back and away like burning parchment. Mid-
May sunlight is an accomplished mapmaker, I’ve found. I watch
as new roadways careen across my forearms, wonder
at the momentary islands rising up along the patient river
of my spine. I spot pockmarked burial grounds blooming
between my shoulder blades. And as I walk those spaces
with my eyes, I remember the secrets that long-ago boy left
in my country, hands pressing against my sacred hills,
then enfolding and finally resting in the simple basin
just beneath my collarbones and above my breasts––
in supplication for what he believed might not come to pass.