Things That Probably Left A Mark

The chicken pox I had when I was 4.

The sounds of homeless people rummaging through our curbside trash.

Hissing of cockroaches in the bathroom sink.

My mother, crying, by the blue glow of the television light on 9/11.

Tripping over my dog on the carpeted staircase.

Every crack of ball on bat.

My undying belief that a ghost haunted that house.

Every whitehead I didn’t know not to pop.

Rug burns.

Blood stains from my first period.

Adolescent embarrassment of an overbearing father.

Crippling anxiety (then and now).

The undetermined scar on my chin.

Emancipation papers I never filed.

My family calling me a liar.

Cigarette ash on a summer night.

First love.

Cat scratches.

All the lies he ever told.

The difference between sleeping with someone and sleeping with someone you love.

Learning to live beyond the grief.

The absence of all the lives I could have lived.