Constellation Freckle between my breasts
began as a melanated heart-shaped label at my birth,
a grave marker from a past life,
the faded scar from a fatal wound or grief. 

The cluster began its quiet separation 
from pop to pointelism to abstract art,
Sharpie-drawn dots on an expanding balloon, 
individuating as the volume of breath and blood increased.

After skin-saving mastectomies, the surviving freckles stand 
in ruined monument, a rubbled pyramid of metamorphic rocks
in the valley between reconstructed breasts
a rune to release and bind the past.

When I die, I hope they reconvene like magnets,
vibrating in one last muddy embrace over my quieted heart, 
a patch over frayed threads straining across my chest cavity.
May their next rebirth appear in the shape of a sword.