Braille

I want you to touch my body as vellum,
let your fingers flutter over bone,
travel the rises and depressions of rib-ridges,
interpret the bumps and ripples of skin,
the raised lines of scar-script
that have become Braille.

These marks are a history of leaving --
an exodus from my body. These grooves
that stretch across stomach and abdomen
in delicate, curved arcs and shining lines,
these purpled shadows and globed nubs of skin,
are the indelible disclosures of absence;
they mark the departure of organs,
children, and blood. Of the pieces of me.