First: under your left eye, eight stitches
            from our black lab who, like I warned,
            would bite if you pulled his whiskers out.

Second: the crown of your skull, stapled
            after it split open on the basement floor.
            Dad blotting the blood with Band-Aids.

Third: back of your head, sewn up
            after leaping from your plastic bike
            knees to your chin, a concrete wall.

Fourth: right middle finger, caught
            in the jamb of a YMCA door
            after our first swimming lesson.

Fifth: our matching birthmarks
            swooping under the joint of thumb
            like a fading comet.

Sixth: left arm, track marks.

Christina Thatcher is a Creative Writing Lecturer at Cardiff Metropolitan University. She keeps busy off campus too as the Poetry Editor for The Cardiff Review and as a freelance workshop facilitator and festival coordinator. Her poetry and short stories have featured in a number of publications including The London Magazine, Planet Magazine, The Interpreter’s House and more. Her first collection, More than you were, was shortlisted in Bare Fiction’s Debut Poetry Collection Competition in 2015 and published by Parthian Books in April 2017. Website: christinathatcher.com, Twitter @writetoempower.