Scars
for W.
The half-moon scars around your collarbone are waxing open,
exposing arteries, veins, capillaries: the smallest cell your body makes
I can see, because I can see everything tonight in your pixilated face,
in the shut lashes that quiver awake: the way you sound your pleasure
and the way I understand it, the way you hate to be alone,
the same way I hate to be alone, the way you have balanced
your life on matchbooks and glass splinters, the way you tip the bourbon bottle,
the way your yellow hips are their own skeleton. I see these things
as clearly as I see the purple-gray sheets or the pillowcases,
which are monogrammed with a name that used to be yours,
but I call you something different, I call you what you say to call you,
and you call me a biblical name, a primordial name, a name that opens
a closed umbrella inside of me, forcing the bones and skin
to rearrange my body into something I thought I could never become,
into something I thought I could never show to anyone, even to myself,
something you want to touch, something I want you to touch,
something that reminds me I was afraid to write this for you,
I was afraid to use our language because it was ours, I was afraid
because it would make me cry, because it would make me laugh,
because it’s dark under the blanket but the light touches us everywhere.
Nana
Six, maybe, I watched you undress
in your bedroom, stepping
out of your yellow-gray slip,
bent in half: creased, white
stomach, parabolic spine
dotted with white marbles,
thick-strapped bra, rippled
breasts. You hurried, modest but
not wanting to leave me
alone while you slid
into your polyester slacks—
play clothes, you called them.
I wondered at your body,
thinking of my own
and of my mother’s. I loved
them, I wanted mine
to grow faster. And when
you were done, you pulled
me on a trashcan lid
through the packed snow
on the driveway, smiling.
Today, you sip
your whiskey sour, recalling
how you changed our diapers,
danced the Macarena,
and rode The Sky Princess
at Dutch Wonderland.
You are proud. I watch your fingers
drift down your neck
as you speak, then halt
when they reach your collar-
bone, just above the roadmap
of scars where your breasts
used to be. It was weeks
before you’d return
to your dinner dances,
ashamed. And those doctors
thought you were lucky,
those doctors thought
an old lady wouldn’t feel
embarrassed, didn’t need
to fill out a dress.
Falling Down
My skeleton is not hollow
like a bird's, it is marrowed
with the full ring of your laughter,
the slender give of your skin. I sink
like a wrench in a swimming pool
until I hit the soft ground
of your breasts and arms,
which will build the earth
that cups me, and when I reach
that warm place, I rise
like an anemic drop of blood
in sugar water, the test that proves
no one else can use my body.
Bio: Rachel Marie Patterson is an M.F.A. candidate at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she teaches introductory composition. Her poems appear in The Red River Review and Superstition Review.