A Guide to Picking Scabs
She was a melancholic girl then she was a young woman with a sweet public face and private potty mouth. She felt unloved but mostly unnoticed, unsure, and determined. (To be better wasn’t her mission; to deal or die was).
She spent an inordinate amount of time considering her own death, sex as love, and her perceived lack of fitness. And she was always praying. (God was never listening so she harassed the hell out of him).
She struggled for metaphors, believed herself on the verge, and resigned herself to grey.
She would let no shady hucksters—they were all shady hucksters to her—find her slipping. But they were attractive and she was attracted.
So there she was and wasn’t. Invisible in plain sight.
Years later, when she is reintroduced to herself, this 20-something self, she has to squint at first to recognize her. And those who know her only faintly remember this self either.
So the pair sit and talk.
Like the old man watching his aged wife sees her calves curved gently; skin a noiseless photo—smooth—and taut over her round cheeks the changes are cataracted though the object the same: to be noticed without making noise; to create; and crunch her belly concave; to reciprocate love; and draw sharp the world in words slicing clean, kiragami.
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Read more from and about Breathing Lessons 101 (my “good girl” project HERE and HERE).
Book me for a reading or talk or buy the art book Breathing Lessons 101 HERE.
darlene anita scott 