Home Scar

Yellowing paper, struck 
by the metal of missing 
letters. I look for proof 
of the hour, the minute, 
the second I came into 
this world. That door's edges
look too clean, yet I can't slide
it open to find a striped 
cotton blanket, the inked
footprint blurred on a square 
of paper. You'd think I'd be done
by now, trying to read between
the lines— I forget sometimes 
that my first names were forged
in the bodies of the only people  
who could have begun my history. 
I want to imagine the moment
was more than a wound, more 
than a sentence drawn around
a future we came to inhabit. 
When the tide goes out, 
limpets search along the shore 
for scars they left on rock.