The Cut

The following is in response to a prompt provided by @Nimila

Which one was the deepest?

I’ve lost track. Why count?

The number doesn’t matter.

How does the body remember ?

It must be the wounds that lie

Deeper beneath the surface

Buried but never forgotten.

The wounds that left a scar or

The more insidious ones that are invisible

But persistent, defying oblivion.

For me, the ones that kept reopening

Were the ones that resulted

From the same origins.

The feeling of being on the margins

The pain of never being mainstream

The shame of never seeming cool

The desperation of wanting to belong

The haunting fear of not measuring up

The rejected, the forsaken, the undermined, the mislabeled.

Somewhere along the way, I lost track.

Who was I?

Waiting for validation seemed like a stupid game.

The odds were stacked against me.

The intensity of the pain dulled with time, but the wounds reminded me

That the distance of time and space

Was a temporary reprieve

The ache returned in unexpected moments.

A belittling remark, a dismissive reaction,

A sarcastic smile opened the floodgates and I was

My younger self again.

The only way to assuage the pain was to

acknowledge and try to release it

And realize that I was enough

Scars and all.