Member Poem

On my left ankle there is a raised welt of skin
As long as an inchworm.
It has stretched and grown with me over the years
Since I was six and loved Top Ramen
Ocean blue soy sauce flavor.

My mother liked to break apart the noodle packet
And one fell out onto that ankle
Singing and cementing my love for convenience food
With a kiss.

I recounted the tale to my mother one day
As we reminisced about past sorrows.
She told me that my scar was the result
of my skin getting caught in a shoe zipper
When I was three.

My past is a tapestry of Thesean ships.
My father earned crutches falling down
the seventeen concrete steps in front of our house in the summertime.
Not a seventeen foot highway overpass
In the dead of winter.

My first grade friend’s mother never told me
She loved me more than her own child,
A vibrant girl
And the only reason I ever got detention.

While Carroll’s darling dreamed ten impossible things before breakfast
I have dreamed countless plausible
In my lifetime.

I sometimes wonder if reincarnation is truly necessary
To live a new life.
Or does one simply need to close their eyes and wake reborn
An infant in a withered body?

Who’s to say that it hasn’t happened already?
That all the residents in their wheelchairs
Aren’t in fact ravaged with illness
But have simply slept too long after
Sipping from that mythological river and
Debating philosophy with Rip Van Winkle?