The Spare

My mother stands in seventy-four,

beside a glass-paned grocery store.

She’s looking at her own dark eyes,

before the years and the goodbyes.

Today on the bus, a hand gripped the rail,

the skin was thin, the knuckles pale.

A jagged scar, just like my own,

a mark across the shift of bone.

A thumbprint left upon the pane,

the same blood running in the vein.