Scars

From the ground up I feel the marks of my mistakes and triumphs etched in my flesh in both jagged and straight lines of slightly pinker lines. My right foot reminds me with a slight dash to never be barefoot in the kitchen particularly when my mother’s grapefruit knife is on the table. An angry parallel redness behind my left ankle taught me to be aware of running dog leashes. My knees belong to the summer with a fall down a hill at camp that was stopped by the brief marriage of kneecap and tree stump left a diagonal guestbook memento on the left and a high school football tumble into rocky rubble on the right tell again to further be aware, at least on a cursory level, of surroundings while attempting joy.  Fingers and thumbs are a rail yard of pocket knife slips and broken glass souvenirs of rushing to catch the ice cream truck. Up the wrist, now almost imperceptible beneath a Cheshire Cat, smiles up at me the day I tried to prove to my little sister that I knife was not sharp. Sometimes big brothers don’t know it all. Around my back a connect-the-dots of hornet stings attach a mistrust of schoolyard bullies throwing sticks and the eternal kindness of faceless strangers with water hoses. When at last I reach, as of today, my most northern mark a scar beneath a scar. Second grade surgery below the chin contains the cruelty of young children towards the unusual while the larger slash into that memory taught me that Doctors don’t know it all either. Most memories are scattered like my scars with certain events burned brightly into focus for random reasons that I don’t really know why they were chosen but I know how.