Scars
On my back are two barely distinguishable scars running diagonally upward toward my spine. Their placement is about equadistant and near the relative middle of my upper body. For as long as I've known they were there, I humorously told people they were where my wings used to be.
I have vague memories of how I actually aquired these markings. Both times I was inhebriated, and involved in a violent exchange. The first time was while making love, though now I can't recall who it was with, or when it happened. The second time was in a friendly brawl with my roomate Caleb in our stairwell. My back was slammed against the wall into an exposed nail, and then I fell a few steps, dragging the cut wide.
I think.
Earlier this year I visited my family in California, and while rock climbing with my little brother and his best friend Scott, slipped and fell headfirst into bus sized rocks jutting out of the ocean as it broke against the cliff. While falling, I used my arms to shield my head as I hit the first rock, and then dragged my left arm against an outcropping on the cliff to try and slow my decent. Eventually, after hitting another rock with my chest, I fell into the ocean. All of the skin on the underside of my left arm is now white and differently shaped, like a repaired pair of jeans with the patch of denim put on the wrong way.
Tonight I had a dream that explained it differently.
I still fell off the cliff, but as I fell time slowed down. I dropped slowly through the air, knowing that the full force of impact was still present and waiting, just that I had much more time to think about it now before it arrived. Without a thought I pulled the skin off of my arm and stretched it out before me, pulling and twisting it into a thin sheet. When it was larger than myself I tore it in half, and reaching both hands behind my back, dug them into my flesh, weaving my altered skin into myself. Blood flowed down my arm and dripped off of my elbow, staining the left sheet of skin with spots of red, and as the new parts of my body fused into one, time returned to claim me again.
But in its absense I had become something new, and flew above the rocks I had fallen into before. I glided over the rolling waves, elated in this freedom, this myth of life. I looked up as the wind gusted beneath me, buffeting me into the sky, and saw the sun.
I awoke. I lay in bed and felt each scar burning, the two on my back and the whole of my left arm. Had I been tearing at them in my sleep, or had the dream mussed up my physiology like a fantasy that suprises us with excited members?
Or perhaps I am living backwards, like Merlin, inside and outside of time, changing memory to reality by simply remembering that it happened.
"Oh, those? Those are where my wings used to be. Ha ha."
-Sean
I have vague memories of how I actually aquired these markings. Both times I was inhebriated, and involved in a violent exchange. The first time was while making love, though now I can't recall who it was with, or when it happened. The second time was in a friendly brawl with my roomate Caleb in our stairwell. My back was slammed against the wall into an exposed nail, and then I fell a few steps, dragging the cut wide.
I think.
Earlier this year I visited my family in California, and while rock climbing with my little brother and his best friend Scott, slipped and fell headfirst into bus sized rocks jutting out of the ocean as it broke against the cliff. While falling, I used my arms to shield my head as I hit the first rock, and then dragged my left arm against an outcropping on the cliff to try and slow my decent. Eventually, after hitting another rock with my chest, I fell into the ocean. All of the skin on the underside of my left arm is now white and differently shaped, like a repaired pair of jeans with the patch of denim put on the wrong way.
Tonight I had a dream that explained it differently.
I still fell off the cliff, but as I fell time slowed down. I dropped slowly through the air, knowing that the full force of impact was still present and waiting, just that I had much more time to think about it now before it arrived. Without a thought I pulled the skin off of my arm and stretched it out before me, pulling and twisting it into a thin sheet. When it was larger than myself I tore it in half, and reaching both hands behind my back, dug them into my flesh, weaving my altered skin into myself. Blood flowed down my arm and dripped off of my elbow, staining the left sheet of skin with spots of red, and as the new parts of my body fused into one, time returned to claim me again.
But in its absense I had become something new, and flew above the rocks I had fallen into before. I glided over the rolling waves, elated in this freedom, this myth of life. I looked up as the wind gusted beneath me, buffeting me into the sky, and saw the sun.
I awoke. I lay in bed and felt each scar burning, the two on my back and the whole of my left arm. Had I been tearing at them in my sleep, or had the dream mussed up my physiology like a fantasy that suprises us with excited members?
Or perhaps I am living backwards, like Merlin, inside and outside of time, changing memory to reality by simply remembering that it happened.
"Oh, those? Those are where my wings used to be. Ha ha."
-Sean