Watching you sleep, moved by the shape of your body,
I wonder about the scars, childhood mishaps
provoked by your endless curiosity, marks
dropped on the surface from chickenpox, faint
as if you have been mapped by drops of soft rain,
and the memorials of love scratches from beloved cats
leaving Hansel and Gretel bread patterns on your hands
that have traced my own scars like reading a book.
Have you felt the tracks of my living in such quiet spaces
when my chest rises and falls against your back
pressing those scars into your sleeping form
wishing you awake, shaken by the turning of your body?
Pages of braille, mysterious to the unfamiliar fingers,
you translate me into all our languages.
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Kathleen Kremins is a Newark, NJ native of Irish immigrant parents and a retired public school teacher. She is the author of The Ethics of Reading: The Broken Beauties of Toni Morrison, Arundhati Roy, and Nawal el Sadaawi, and her first book of poetry, Undressing the World, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in June 2022. Kathy’s work appears in The Night Heron Barks, The Paterson Literary Review, Moving Words 2020 project, The Stillwater Review, Lavender Review, Sensations Magazine, Divine Feminist: An Anthology of Poetry & Art By Womxn and Non-Binary Folx, and Too Smart to be Sentimental: Contemporary Irish American Women Writers.
Social Media: Instagram @kreminsk; Facebook @Kathy Kremins (Kathleen Kremins); Twitter @KathyKremins
