Plush white bunny fur

sensual feel against skin

hides depth of his teeth

ivories sink deeply into flesh

scars remain but I get even

hot rabbit stew for dinner!

Pinhead scabs in the hundreds dotted my legs and no one besides me and the perpetrator would have known had it not been a Monday/Wednesday/Friday gym day.

I had a choice. Refuse to put on my gym uniform or go to see the principal for refusing to change into my gym uniform. Inclined towards obedience at nine years old, I followed protocol; pants off, shorts on. Besides. Dodge ball was worth the risk.

Some people dream, some perform magic, some know denial so well, as I did, that I did not consider how obvious the tiny scabs on my legs would be to an onlooker. After several gasps from my fellow students, unfortunately for me, dodge ball was not to be when my gym teacher assumed I had some type of infectious disease and sent me to the school nurse.

The nurse took one look at my legs and said, "What is this?" Her eyes were not symmetrical when she asked. They were askew, two eyebrows divided.

"You're the nurse." I said respectfully. "You tell me? A rash? Maybe?"

She and I both knew the truth and she and I both knew there was not much we could do about it. It was the 1960's. Abused kids were a dime a dozen. We looked each other in the eye for a nanosecond and then looked away; don't ask don't tell was unwritten, unspoken and all apparent.

"Does it itch?" The nurse asked, doing her job. "I can apply calamine lotion if it will make you feel better."

"No. Thank you. It doesn't itch. Can I go back to gym class now?" I said, pining for a red ball smack down on some innocent classmate.

"Okay. Tell the gym teacher I said you are not infectious." The Nurse winked a between you and I wink and I left her grateful that I dodged a different ball.

Why was it that I wanted to protect the perpetrator? It could have been all said and done if I wanted it said and done. "Tell" would have gotten me somewhere. Maybe? Maybe not. I didn't even consider there was an option. What happened behind my front door was not to exit under any circumstances, and was understood without words, the same way rat poison was sprinkled in a corner.

Returning to gym class, as if nothing had happened, on my first try I hit my opponent harder than I should have and was apologetic. What I might have said in words instead of the G-Force was, "She beat me again. Not with her hand. With the hair brush this time. My mother beat me so much harder than I just beat you, so please, forgive me."

the tiny tick marks on my skin

not what you'd think,

rather, i was mighty clumsy

and often times, bored

those are the ones that mark my skin

the ones that heal easily

the ones that i hide deep inside, though

they drip blood from the wounds continually

the abuse

the fear

the hate

and the thoughts

the words

the raising of a hand

the snears and laughter

the whispers in my head

those scars

don't heal as quick

i'm not sure if they heal

at all

~

keloid marks

each scar,

deceived,

as

gaping wounds

b

l

e

e

d

lies,

believed.

**

Previously posted titled “Keloid”

Life will never be the same

You can’t turn back and change it all

The scars from where you made me fall

I wish these things you could recall

My heart will never be the same

Somehow, I feel the guilt, and all the shame

I feel the pain each time it rains

Down to my knees, I’ve heard it all

Before this, I was so deep in love

Back then, I loved you, just because

I couldn’t see through all the fog

I should’ve saved me first of all

The time we spent chasing our tails

At night, I laid in bed and wailed

Not sure if I believed the tales

Wish I could’ve known so I could tell

You not to give into the game

Not to go down in burning flames

It was the years I could have saved

I could’ve saved us all the pain

And misery

Trying to find who you’re meant to be

Having to get back up on your feet

Having to fight the beast you beat

so, you could come running back to me

In middle school, I knew a boy. He was in eighth grade, while I was in seventh, and he was pretty nice. He liked the same music as me, and was really funny. The only thing was, he was depressed. I didn't know what someone being depressed looked like, until he revealed that he wanted something to cut himself with. I asked him why, and he said, "Because I'm depressed". He was one of my friends, and I don't want to see anything happen to him. I don't know why he was depressed, but I didn't ask. If he wanted to reveal to me what he was depressed about, that was going to be his choice. The only thing I really cared about personally was making sure that he was okay. He was scarred, and I cared about him greatly. To this day, I still don't know what his emotional scar was.

My parents never trusted me to stay home alone during summer breaks, they used to leave me at my grandmother’s house from mid-July until the end of August, and I would think “I didn’t want to be with you, anyway.” She was a typical old lady, liked gardening, soap operas and little more. The good thing was she allowed me to leave the house all day even though I was only seven. I met other kids, most were older than me, and we got along. We all knew how to ride a bike, and they let me borrow theirs and take turns jumping over dirt hills. At the end of the day we came back, and, with me being the ‘new kid’ they thought it best to escort me to my grandmother’s house. I didn’t even see her, I only heard “Your shorts!” My grandmother ran out of the garden and slapped me in the legs with each word “THESE-ARE-NEW-CLEAN-SHORTS.” I tried to escape from her but she was too strong. She pulled me up by the arm until I was tip-toeing and struggling to keep balance. I screamed and tried to fight her, but again, she was too strong. Then she slapped my bottom. I think it was five slaps in two seconds, though, as you may imagine, it felt longer than that. The pain was the furthest thing in my mind, I just wished for the other boys not to be there, but they were. I sometimes glanced at them, they were still and silent, unsure of what to do. She released me and ordered me inside. I didn’t look at the boys again. For the rest of that summer, and every summer after that, I stayed in the house night and day. I didn’t like my grandmother’s shows, so I would stay in the guest room playing with toys and often looking out the window. I think that’s when I started liking to be alone. I was always upset but couldn’t explain why. Now I can.

My scars ran deep, hidden beneath the surface.

But you came close and I thought you saw the real me.

You studied my past scars and said you accepted me anyway.

But eventually you realized they really were more than you could handle.

So you left.

and now I am covered in scars

My grandma often complained to others about me. “If there’s a hole on the ground, her leg has to get in there. If there is a single rock peeping out of a wasteland, she has to trip on it. There is no ditch she has not fallen into, and there’s probably no tree she has not slid down from.” The insistence with which she used the ‘she has tos,’ did not escape anyone.

I can’t blame her. My finely brushed ponytail would be askew in seconds. The beautifully pressed dress would come back with rips in less than half hour from the time I wore it. You see, I would have crawled between barbed wire fences meant to keep curious visitors like me out. Even before ripped jeans were in fashion, my jeans were always ripped at the knees. "You must have saws for knees," was the standing joke.

There was not a tree I could not climb or a stream I could not dip my toe into. I learned many things by myself. I learned to bike way before I was old enough to sit on the seat. I learned to climb the rocks and mountains. Scraping and skinning joints were normal. I was not afraid of heights, depths, adventures...or falling. Most of all, I learned this valuable lesson all by myself. Getting into something’s always a lot easier than getting out of it.

I’ve grown out of all those shenanigans, and I laugh when I see the faded scars. Each one has a memory.

Life can also be unkind, and if it must allocate scars to people, let them always be like mine.

My loving mother would feel sad to see my wounds. “Why can’t you be like the other girls?” But, I wore the scars proudly like a medal. Everytime I came back with a new scrape, I would be taken to the old neighborhood doctor. His hands often trembled and I suspected his memory integrity. But, he always remembered me. The old man truly hated the job when I was hauled by mom for treatment and dressing. He would have to run around with a tetanus injection needle and bandages in the small office, chasing a young girl screaming to high heaven.

His perplexed question was the same to my mother, “How does she come back with all these wounds and scars without tearing up and yet manage to create this much drama for a mere shot?”

Like little ladders laid along the lengths of my arms.

Scars

My regrets incarnate

Permanent potrail of prepubescence adjustment; illustrations of a teen struggling with how she feels.

Scars perhaps made more lasting by their timing aligning with the surgery that would steal my right ovary instead of its purpose which was to heal an appendix gone bad that I then had to deal with, slowly bleeding inside of me until someone would diagnose it. That took 15 years it turned out.

I lament that my body must have been busy adjusting to that, rather than healing those wounds. So they sit forever, recent looking, as if they're new.

My body adapting to its lack of hormones as my brain was then tricked into thinking it was in menopause.

As if middle school wasnt cause enough for self destructive fauxpaws, I cut because it made sense of my pain.

My mental decline understandable but it was less permanent than the marks on my skin.

Nowadays I'm exteriorly judged within minutes of meeting me, the cuts cut me off from opportunity and make others uncomfortable while making me uncomfortable as a professional in the summertime because I’ll guaranteed be wearing long sleeves and ignoring the confused glances of all who pass me and those jokers who tease me.

Better than those when they notice my scars.

over a decade in my past but still a big part of how I'm viewed.

Regret doesn't cover it and thinking about it

Reminds me that I can't change what I've been through.