Observations of My Arm

Hair grows out of my arm two or three
strands to a pore.
It shines like filaments of gold in the lamplight.

I am reminded that we have the same
number of hairs as a chimpanzee,
our distant cousin who never learned to stand,
never got that muscle memory deep into her thighs and followed it.

Pigment as dark as earth floats to the top layer of my skin in dots,
like a lily pad extending to the sun.

I am all mammals beneath their fur – pale, white, sunless.
But these freckles remind me that I was there and back again,
that every memory within me has its place.