"story of a scar"

I've recently joined an online writing group that meets weekly through Lacuna Loft. It's been really lovely so far- we are spread across the country, but join together for two hours every week on a video chat and write and share our work out loud. It's made me very aware that I should be more diligent in my writing, because I've been really inspired by our meetings together (of which there's only been two! So much fun already.) and it makes me want to spend more time every day just writing down my sputtering thoughts.

Here's a little clip. This is from a 12-ish minute writing block with the prompt: "story of a scar". The thing I value the most about our group so far is that we have a no-apology rule. You are not allowed to apologize for your writing. We know you wrote it five minutes ago; it's rough, messy, perhaps non-coherent. But it doesn't need any explanation. I love that. That's where inspiration comes alive. 

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hello my name is sort-of-Frankenstein. Well, if I’m completely honest with the pretentious English major part of me, I’d really be “Sort-of-Frankenstein’s-Monster”. But yeah, I have weird holes all over the place, and not just the ones you’re born with. I have new ones, drilled into me, deep and deep and things pulled out of me through a medical sippy cup straw. I have holes poked under the thin skin of my wrist and inner elbow, dark mark echoes of stabs from being fished like a salmon in a stream: wildly pushing against the current and pulling away from the hurt.

I have holes in my chest, two the size of bullets straight to my heart. I have knicks in my collar bone to remind me of that fishing wire. There’s plenty to look at, there’s plenty to answer a four-year-old’s question of “what is that” and “is your body better now?”

I don’t know. Because there’s more holes than just those. There’s holes everywhere. Every time I look in the mirror and see the dark circles of my eye sockets, the jutting bones of my cheeks and hollow shoulders. The enemy is defeated, I guess. But what’s left now is a mostly empty monks bowl of a girl, waiting for the generosity of some Samaritan to empty their pocket lint into me. I’m “Sort-of-Frankenstein’s-Monster”, a girl: blood’s enemy and life's eternal question. Are you alive? But how pretentious. Who are you to question what happens?

There are more holes than what you see. It’s been years of building and building, watching it crumble; building and building, watching it crumble. The enemy is defeated, I guess.

I feel like a crevice, a place between other places. Maybe water flows through me in the wet season if we’re lucky, but always slowly dries out like chalk in the next. I’m waiting for that current- either electric fire from my maker bringing me to life, or the water surge- where like a salmon, I’ll leap free into the air.

-b