ASSIGNMENTS:
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Madeline
Asheville, North Carolina USA
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REPORTS:
PREVIOUS NEXT
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This isn't exactly a scar. At age seven, I never crashed my bike, never ran home with tears in my eyes to have my father pour burning peroxide on my sore, scraped neck. At thirteen, I never had a boyfriend, never let him kiss my neck until it became raw, bruised, a scarlet announcement of our eighth-grade love. At seventeen, I never had a car accident, never lost control, flipping into a ditch with window glass shattering around me, burrowing into my neck. It's a birthmark. Those three words tumble out of my mouth automatically when concerned adults eye me warily and ask what happened, or curious children run their fingers across my skin, amazed that red is the same texture as white.
Once, when I was still little, I told someone that it was a mark to prove that I was, in fact, born: a scar from the nine months and two weeks that I resided in my mother's stomach. I forced my way out when I was good and ready (foreshadowing the stubbornness I inherited from both of my grandmothers) with a wailing voice that never grew quiet, and a port-wine stain adorning my newborn neck.
It's a part of me in the way my smile and voice and hands and faith in humanity are a part of me. It's a stain I will not wash, a scar I don't want to heal.
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