Scars

I was staring at L today, not an uncommon experience because she's so easy to look at, and I thought about the scar underneath her left eye. String, our cat, scratched her about two and a half years ago, and now there's a mark that will likely vanish over time.

It made me think about my forearms, and how they used to be covered in scabs -- not from scratches and pinches from our cat, but from Alice. Between the ages of 4 and 14 -- and I don't have to say who was which age because we were so close -- we frequently got into fights over something, or anything. At the time I bit my nails, and she didn't. Neither did she seem to cut them. When we fought, she easily dug her fingertips into the flesh of my arms, leaving skin hanging, and sometimes blood dripping.

During those years, the color of the skin on my arms blended into a nearly even brown, the shade of scabs becoming scars. And now as I look, and look, for Alice, I look down on my arms and see that my scars have healed. The visible scars, at least.

The one glaring scar on my existence has yet to heal. Meanwhile I can longingly remember the pinches and scratches that marked my childhood with Alice.