Grass too green,
sunlight ripped into jagged shards
by the fig tree’s fists of shadow.
Cupcakes bleeding frosting,
iced coffee sweating through paper cups.
We pretended it was a family.
We pretended.
Mum sat besides Dad,
like their bones remembered being joined.
Like his hands weren’t already holding someone else’s.
Like her vows weren’t chained to her job.
I opened my mouth.
The sugar rotted on my tongue.
Everything spoiled.
And I told them.
How I hunted for older hands.
How I thought I needed it.
How I wanted out when I saw the second man,
but the door was already locked.
How they used me.
How one carved into me,
split me open with steel,
left a word to rot inside my skin.
My own scars, I’ve loved.
They are mine,
my handwriting on my body.
But this one,
this one crawls.
It doesn’t heal,
it festers,
a maggot under the flesh,
hissing that I didn’t choose it.
A vandal’s tag on my skin.
An infection of me.
Dad’s face twisted, anger,
then collapse.
Mum’s face, vanished,
then drowned in tears.
The helpers, two statues,
faces carved like gravestones,
motionless as I gutted myself.
I clutched my ribs,
hugged myself,
but the scar pulsed,
thick, swollen,
as if it was laughing.
And no one reached for me.
The picnic died.
Flies feasted on icing,
ants drowned in coffee.
Mum and Dad pulled apart,
the rug split like torn flesh.
And me,
already in pieces,
my body a crime scene.
I dragged myself to the sun,
limped like the scar was a chain.
Collapsed.
Let the world blur.
Even in sleep,
I felt it twitch,
like a parasite feeding.
When I woke,
a hand on my face.
Gentle. Slow.
Tracing me the way she once did
when I was a baby,
her fingers mapping me
like I was new to her again.
She avoided the carved word.
Her touch lingered on the scars I made myself,
as if she understood those belonged to me.
Her fingertips circled,
again and again,
like she was trying to write over the wound,
to overwrite the trespass,
to give me back the body I lost.
Mum beside me,
breathing clouds.
No words.
Just her arms,
finally closing around me.
And for one fragile moment,
the scar went still.
Not gone.
Never gone.
But almost forgotten.
22: 22pm / Make a wish! I know it only counts for 11:11 but 22:22 counts as well
