autobiography

By Lexi McDonald

a mother reads her child’s life as she does their callouses.

her fingers trace sonnets across their knuckles and palms like sinus rhythm;

her gentle hands crest upon her child’s lips, caressing the gasp of a breath;

she outlines their upturned nose, dark, flittering eyelashes, dimpled chin;

studies their account of childhood where she’s an antagonist, not a hero;

and strikes out liberal language in red with a handprint on a soft cheek;

encircles wrists, forearms, and shoulders in blue where her depiction

doesn’t mirror her own narrative; she purges places and people and

proper nouns from her child to revise their life’s story, to guide it;

the mother leads her child’s life as she does their careful words –

to the end.