Moles

I am black, so my skin is brown -

but browner still,

even more than my eyes,

or my hair

are the little flecks on my fingers and toes

that only we see and know.

For three generations of women my skin

has remembered how to replicate

a spot on a middle finger,

or a mark between first and second knuckle

and left those blemishes there

to mark us out to each other -

and though, for years, through various failings,

I've layered my hands with scald and scar

my heirloom moles persevere

and remind me, that even though

there is no one else quite like me

there are bodies like mine:

one sips tea on a veranda in the jamaica heat

while the other, here, smiles my smile.

And as she grips the handle of the cup, or turns the page

and as I type this,

that little brown middle-finger mole sits proud and dark:

a smudged secret that only we three share

and my daughters will one day discover.