we identify each other in joy,
by pain, by our ceremonial tattoos, what is
and amounts to ritualistic burnings—like,
in the dark, I feel the
spot where someone dared you to put a cigarette out, in the rain,
on your flesh. Joyfully,
your fingers brush the jagged “x” that is
was supposed to stop my breath. We is
like anthropologists, we explore like
scientists each other’s damaged pasts, the
keloid I got in ninth grade, dancing in the rain
making happy faces with my lighter, the joy
of youth, the circle of blue dots all the world like
my mother’s polio vaccination scar, the
damage a twelve-year-old did with a safety pin and India ink, the rain
splatter-marks, dents of Braille graffiti on your chest—this spells “joy”—
made by a drunk stepfather, too many years to count, it just is
we are
never completely naked