What do you want to call it—proof of great resilience?
Certainly not.
A pitiful habit carried young and quiet?
No—
There are hundreds of ways
to dress old wounds in quartz and flowers
but reality is still grotesquely ordinary.
I did it because I wanted to.
These cicatrice mouths
they don’t tell me anything
other than that they wish to multiply,
an invasive kudzu spread
striping my skin like a pledge of allegiance.
I sit and the mountainous scars stretch across the arc of my thigh
like an overextended platitude
And you’ll find this to be an opportunity
to tell me whatever they mean to you
Self-destructing canyons as
pornography for your benevolence.
So I will say,
sincere as a knife,
they mean to me an empty car
no passengers
driving to nowhere, nowhere at all.
You must want a nice story,
maybe an inspirational ending.
Don’t give me that look.
I’m sorry,
I only have abstraction.
These scars—
they are mine.
That’s all they are.
Morgan Gibby is a junior majoring in English at Kennesaw State University. Aside from her academic interests, she enjoys feeding stray cats and taking excessively long naps. Her favorite book is “Carmilla” by Sheridan Le Fanu and she will talk about it for hours to anyone brave enough to listen.