46.8164° N, 90.6892° W

The map of my body was drawn in green glitter gel pen on a torn diner napkinunder the buzzing white light of the bulbsabove the restaurant booth. It was carved with a pocketknife into the surface of a wobbling wooden tablelittered with crumbs of a meal eaten like wolves to a carcass—greedy and rabid—flesh ravaged by incisors and not even bone left behind.Dark silhouettes of men sat around the table, brows furrowed and heads bent inwardin twisted benediction.They cut through the varnish and scraped into the wood,lines both delicate and brutal—the atlas of my anatomy.Engraved into cedar surface and eyes of unknown men. The map of my bodywas drafted in sugar cubes onto the linoleum of my grandmother’s kitchen floor. Sleepover pillow talk, front-of-mirror body talk, cousins, aunts, sisters, mothers,sat together and whispered to me the sweetness of Woman—single-use, crumbling corners, meltaway. The faucet was dripping, and the windwas blowing the french doors open and shut and open and shut andopen again—valves to arteries. This cartography was writtengingerly by the one person who knows the constellations of my birthmarks. There is a full moon freckle on the bottom of my foot,connected by electric veins to a matching mark on the tip-top of my scalp.They are knotted together, head-to-toe,by hidden telephone wires pulsating with a current of harried whispers. trustmetrustmetrustme rolls over itself like waves,  like bedsheets, like fingers interlaced with another’s.  The map of my body was never mine—my mother unfolded me to the air, and I let myself re-crease, stuffed in well-worn pockets,sun-stained in the windshields of old cars. Now I draw what I can from memory,tracing hooks of elbows, right knee (and scars), curves of hips,  left eyebrow (and scars).Soft white chalk crumbles my shape onto the wet sidewalkas hopscotching children watch and my figure gains dimension,inhaling the greyness of asphalt and clouded sky, exhaling flecks of doubts painted gold.