war wounds

There's a cafe au lait colored slash fading on my outer thigh.

I'll miss it when it's gone—for some reason.

Maybe because I've come to see it as a totem, a mark of my former self.

That scar, approximately 6 inches long, was not earned through valor and victory. There was no fight won, no accident survived, no surgery undergone.

Just me, too much whiskey, and a drunken attempt to climb the exposed pipes in my best friend's old apartment.

FACT: the more intoxicated they are, the harder they fall.

At the time, my life felt like a train wreck, a rogue barge about to plow into the docks, an average Jane with celebrity-grade drama.

When it happened, I didn't feel the pain of an impending nebula of a bruise. I didn't feel the pain of skin jaggedly cleaved by metal.

I only felt growing pains.

I am no longer that person, but I bare the ghosts and scars of her.