Scars
We are puckered or smooth, long, jagged, fading or vivid, crinkled foil in a rainbow of pink, silver, violet, and white. We ache in the cold and burn in the sun. We are a thick white badge on her forearm, a Braille pitchfork on her wrist, shaky letters on her calf. She runs her fingertips over us, back and forth, as if to wear us down--a worry stone she takes everywhere.
Our origins change with each telling--a muttered "Long story," a vague, "Oh, it was a long time ago," or for the more persistent, "It was a cat." It doesn't make sense, but they want to believe it, so they do. Some people think we're stretch marks. The people who know don't ask. Meanwhile, we're always expanding, one fiery gash at a time, spreading farther across the wilderness of her body, thorny vines that bloom vivid with life and then evaporate into cold, unfeeling stalks.
One day, in a hotel room, a boy transforms us with a Sharpie so that a rose and a daisy blossom across her stomach and a tree rises up the center of her chest. A year later, another boy kneels and covers us with his lips, pardoning every one of us for existing. And soon the growth slows, until we all fade into lavenders and become like burned-out stars whose light still reaches the earth. The light of our constellations has traveled a great distance, and is all that remains of a person who doesn't exist anymore. She turns down every helpful suggestion, every cool gel and greasy cream, unwilling to watch us melt like sugar into the surrounding skin--unwilling to erase a girl who was small and afraid and just trying to make it.
