Susana Prayer-Perez is a Pushcart nominated poet, editor, and winner of the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Prize For Poetry. Her first book of poems "Hurricanes, Love Affairs, and Other Disasters" was published by Nomadic Press in 2021. Her second book of poetry "Return Against The Flow" will be published by Black Lawrence Press in 2024.
Beauty
I was born with a birthmark
shaped like Borinquen, a brown island
floating on the sea of my belly,
a curiosity under my fingertips.
My mother always
called my birthmark
a beauty mark, turned it
from stigma to stunning.
When I was ten, a doctor
convinced my parents
this assemblage of melanin
could endanger my future.
He summarily cut
the small map from my body,
edges stitched together,
indurated, upended, and pink.
With time, the scar
became smooth as sea glass,
soft and pliable, stretching
wide as I grew.
By the time I turned twenty-two,
the scar embodied the shape
of Borinquen, suture marks
suggesting surrounding islands:
Vieques, Culebra, Mona,
Palomino, Icacos, and more—
the entire Puerto Rican archipelago
etched again in my flesh.