Musings on Life from a Dead Girl

Scars

I have two scars on my leg from myself

they've faded now so that I think I am the only one to notice them

My fourth toe on my left foot has a massive scar right down the center

I stepped with all of my weight on a cat-food can when I was a toddler and it cut to the bone

It probably deserved a trip to the ER

It probably wouldn't have scarred so badly had I gotten the stiches I needed

But my parents were young dumb and broke so I can't blame them much for it

I have a small scar on my eyelid from a botched cyst removal when I was five

My abdomen is littered with tiny marks from surgeries

A dark purple line runs from my hip to navel, a fat transfer for my brain surgery

To plug the hole made in my sinuses

I have a small red splotch on my right hand, where I dig into my flesh absentmindedly during a particularly bad episode of panic

The tops of both my feet have marks from Hand Foot and Mouth Disease I got from my infant cousins

The backs of both my ankles bare huge burgundy patches from the compression sleeves they made me wear in hospital for a week

I have a small pinhole from the port they put into my foot while I was unconscious during a surgery

My body reads like a storybook of my trauma

Sometimes I wish I could shrug it off like a jacket and leave it behind somewhere, never to think about it again

But I am tethered to this prison of skin and bone

I look over my scars

My many, many scars and I realize that while the visible ones mar my flesh the mental ones inside were far more painful