What do you see when you look my way?
Do you see me, or do you see something else?
Do you see all the imperfections I possess?
These imperfections make me feel less.
Like the shell of a girl in a picture frame.
Do you see what I see in the mirror looking back at me?
A body, all deformed but shapely; this body has had two beautiful babies.
What do you see when you look at my face?
Do you see the unevenness of my eyebrows and the squint in my left eye?
Maybe there are enough glasses for it to hide behind.
Do you see the freckles splattered on my face?
The sun hasn't been gentle on this aging face.
What do you see when you look at me?
Do you see my darkened eyes, so deep and dark that the colors almost don't shine?
Do you see this hair? It's starting to thin with little strands of gray.
What do you see when you look at this aging woman who is almost forty years old?
Maybe…me?

Your freckles are in all the wrong places,
There should be one on the back of your hand

And one on your knee, a little to the right
That you can see when you sit but not when you stand

He had one on his neck also, I used to trace every day
On the ***** where throat turns to shoulder

Your freckles are wrong, its alright, that's okay
Lets put our clothes back on before we get colder

I wish I could trace the freckles on your skin
even the ones I've never seen

I wish I could play with your auburn hair
or platinum, in your true form

I wish I could observe your icy eyes
without it being weird

I wish I could hold your hand
and trace circles with my thumb

I wish I could be less awkward
and tell you I love you

That unforgiving metal.
Within that unforgiving metal lies all the things you cannot forgive about yourself.
Those freckles on your chin that you wish would expand into a constellation so that you may give them names and so that you may give them meaning,
within that unforgiving metal.

The Greeks threw their hands towards the heavens
and deemed cosmic accidents worthy of the names of gods,
although within them lie no gifts.
Like a bedazzled and jaded Tiresias impostor one stumbles upon
on their way home,
who sees nothing but the tangible
and tells all but the truth.
Still, he is clad in diamonds and gold
and thus has value in trade.
Beauty triumphs over mendacity
and mendacity over reality.

But the freckles that mar your skin,
that you cannot transfigure into the most meaningless of stars or the crudest of answers,
sit there defiantly,
waiting to be acknowledged and waiting to be named.

You lean your forehead forward to rest against the cool smoothness of its idle twin.
You could swear you saw her sneer at you.
The freckles do not budge—they will consume you whole.

I could spend hours counting the freckles on your face

if that meant I could spend hours close enough to you to see them

i think what i'm trying to say is that
i wanna know what hand you write with.
that's what i'm interested in,
right, left, maybe even ambidextrous—
show me your birthmarks, and the
little scar you got when you were a kid.
there's a story in your body, on your skin,
and i want to listen to you tell it,
running my fingertips across your freckles
as if i were blind.

And he said that he knows for a fact:
Girls with freckles are happier.

And I told him I’ve heard
That one before,
But he said that he made it up on the spot,
In the bed we’ve made, our sheets less **** –
Creased and dimpled by our weighing bodies –  

When I nagged on him to tell me what he loves
About me on the inside,
Where we’re taught what counts,
Where you’re not allowed to ask,
Where sometimes it’s just too good not to.

On the inside, he listed:
Lungs, liver, ovaries perhaps –
The parts that everyone has,
The parts that can be left unspoken.
And I told him he’s a smart-***.

But on the outside, he touched my cheeks,
I love your freckles because they prove
You’ve lived
Felt the sun on your skin – it’s sunlight sprinkles, after all
Laughed so hard, as they are uneven and all around
That way maybe, every time, your laugh
Scattered them all.