Map

Lay my body down on a flat surface and read it like a map. Even if it's on top of the table at dinner time and disturb the peace of family members on Christmas eve.
Tell them how this body is made up of potholes, strange highways, rivers, mountains, hard rock surfaces, forests, valleys and meanders and how my tears never failed to form lakes and dams at the bottom of my belly where strangers thought it ok to swim and leave pollution here that killed the offspring of my ancestors.
Read it like a map because I was told that you never missed Geography classes.
Bachazele how my tattoos are not for flexing purposes, they were used as a cover up of deeper scars. Tell them how i got the sores on my legs, explain how I fell running even from you and almost broke my knees crawling on gravel surfaces.
Tell them I'm a walking exhibition of pain and clumsiness. Tell them my fake smile will always be the only clear sky about me. This is ok. I've accepted that my body was once like African Gold mines, it's constantly dug into so I decay everyday, my centre can not hold anymore, I'm a living earthquake, the natural disasters that they explain very well.
Read me.
When you done. Fold me and put me away. Who needs to read maps after all. The details in them are old fashioned anyway.