The Island

The bathroom mirror has a silver crack

that splits my face right down the bridge of the nose.

I’m craned around, trying to see my own back,

where the skin is pale and the spine-knobs show.

He touched it last night, right near the blade,

a dark, jagged patch I never knew I carried.

It looks like a tea stain that wouldn't fade,

or an island on a map where the ink got buried.

I’ve lived in this skin for thirty-odd years

and missed a whole piece of the geography.

I wonder what else he sees when he nears

that stays in the dark, out of reach for me.