Bright white
above the bony prominence of the wrist
for years it stood pat,
sticking to its one story,

my small, furious daughter,
the door she slammed on my forearm,
latch biting bone.

The keloid yelled red for a year,
pouted pink for another--
its long change lost among our many,
hers and mine--
then silvered slowly

to a dependable low relief,
something to finger like a talisman,
so that while I wore my body,
one memento stood out from the clutter.

Odd, then, to find it fading
into the creases of my loosening skin
just now,
as I bend over a dustpan,
sweeping clean her empty room.

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Maryann Corbett lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota and works for the Minnesota Legislature as an in-house writing teacher, editor, and indexer. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The William and Mary Review and Strong Verse.
 

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