Scars

I run my fingers over the raised braille of my past,

each line a sentence, each groove a word carved

by moments that once bled and blistered,

but now sit quietly under my skin.

These scars are rivers, etched by the hands of time,

by the burning teeth of sorrow, by the fire that once claimed me

but left only these marks, thin trails of my survival.

I trace them like a lover learning the body of another,

finding the pulse of the past beneath my own skin.

Each one speaks, not in words, but in a language of silence,

a testament to battles fought and lost, and somehow won.

Here, on this wrist, a storm passed through me.

Here, on this shoulder, the sun set on a dream

and I stood in the ash, sifting through the ruins

of what was once my hope.

My body remembers what my heart cannot.

They are not wounds, but doors I walked through

The scars are the skin’s memory,

its story told in raised flesh and pale streaks,

the map of a life that refuses to stay unmarked,

a life that still sings through the scars it has kept.