for r on his birthday

our daughter studies scars—
reads them like leaves,
permanent markers that write their own stories
of mishap, clumsiness, on our skin.
she traces the bridge of my nose,
its crease the only evidence of frayed laces,
of brick stairs long since demolished;
the comma on my thigh endures
long after the pyrex was shattered
and its jewel shards swept into the can under the sink
in the house in the town in the other life.
and now, the scrutiny is on you,
and a footrace, a school nurse, an excused absence,
a prick of novocaine, and pebble after pebble clattering
into a porcelain bowl.
show me, she whispers, like a seer,
while i listen behind a magazine and don’t look.
after all these years,
i know exactly where the scar is, where they all are—
it is misfortune’s fortune.