Birthmark
A poem for Wednesday
In California, even the worst
of us is forgiven: flooding roads
lead to freeway superbloom, birds
make nests out of all our trash.
And despite drought, jacarandas
spike purple in July, their roots
cracking the concrete. Once, I
tripped under one, tore the skin
off my knees. And at last removed
the leftover scars of childhood.
My father fell once outside
the dirtiest apartment I lived
in that overlooked the freeway
on a street where no one walked. Yet
when he fell, some kind stranger
materialized out of the smog and
lifted him to his feet.
I thought then it was an accident,
the stranger a good omen,
and raised no alarm over what
I would call now his thin legs.
But there’s no tree to bloom
from his grave, his body
the opposite of a seed. When I
can no longer bear the weight, I
declutter my closet, my drawers.
Beneath a jacaranda, I leave
my abandoned items on the sidewalk,
and in only hours, my mistakes
are absorbed by the city.
Tonight, with the objects gone,
I try to think of my regrets
with tenderness, handling them
the way someone who loves me
might touch an old scar.
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