Cartography

This body has its cartography: here the bicycle knee at nine, here the vaccine they no longer give.

Here, just below the elbow, the night I jumped a fence over a bet I won and a boy I lost.

Every mark is a place: an August, an operating theatre, a moment's carelessness. The skin keeps minutes of everything in a small white handwriting you can only read up close.

That's why undressing is always showing the map: look, here I fell, here they opened me up, here I healed badly but I healed.

And for someone to travel your scars without asking the price of each one, saying only here, and here, and here, like someone planning a journey: that. That is tenderness.