Hottest June

rooftopping myself into       the arms of the hottest June

Seattle can give       I remind myself that I’m a seed

of desert        drought my first     language        other landscaped 

languages may thrill           but will remain

foreign                     wearing my body bold      I try to stop  

myself from giving it

the side-eye when there is no one to witness my slip of a dress and

where my arms stretch     into marks               lines mapping where

I’m coming from                        and going       I study

my scarred   topography    roughed bumped skin and fat each line 

a curve           manifesting me      visible                      I’m reminded 

of my adolescent ache for dissipation                no whiteness—  

I slathered my grainy arms with     doctor prescribed chemicals

stayed out    of the sun                and waited     for my skin to peel

an unspooling of 

thread into    momentary ocean

but between burning and

unraveling of 

scars 

gathered compliments  for my new delicate dermis

this here is always uneasy           terrain

a whipped up regret                   the family nose too thick for desirability

that teenage mirror             would not reveal the good side of bone 

or       fat     or the brown of this expanse I call                      body

each day since       is worked reflection a tending         to my own geography— 

a sharp bloom of prickly spine.