Lies and scars

There is empowerment in scars,

Skin heals, a property that memory

Seems to lack,

But it does so with a ragged tailor’s eye

Inviting the daily glance, the fingertip

To explore its edges, see how they suit

My scars, the visible ones at least

Have cover stories that I attached,

Bravado is plastered to

This knuckle, split in a fight in the shadows

Of a rented room

The whitish wriggle of a small smirk

Is painted on the chin, a worm thread

A whip tip accident, I say it’s the

Curse of the lion tamer, scarred not scared

And this, the jagged forehead fracture

Perhaps the failed curse of an evil wizard

Almost certainly these days

my cracked skull offers no apologies

Just patchworks of dubious prose

In truth, the knuckle was a cat fight

in which I should not have intervened

And the chin, a trip into a playground wall

Both unhappy accidents

This forehead holds a vertical frown

Where a radiator corner

Broke the skin, I was six and it was the seventh day

The air flooded hot and metallic

a darkness in Summer

With a little needlework

The memories stitch themselves anew,

Fade and fold under the rub of time

They recall the fall, it’s clarity

Forgetting somehow the catalyst,

The soft hand, the gentle push,

the smoothness of lies