I found the scar in the mirror as I was twisting around to see my back. Lying in bed, I had become conscious of the molded shape of my mattress, the particular rises and declivities which allowed the hollow above my hipbones to connect and be cushioned the way it is not when I lay on a hard floor. The thought propelled me up, and I worked my pajama shirt off, easing it around my nighttime braids.
At that time, there were no hands which met with me but my own, so I found those private moments in my room, facing off to my reflection, to be my most intimate. I studied from all angles the shape between my naked thighs, my knees. I stared long and clinically at the line formed by my shoulders until I determined that they were too wide, drawing lankily away from my neck and isolating my head in too open a space. Then, I shrugged by shoulders up to my ears as if I could shrink them. Standing back, then crawling up to bump my nose with a cool spark on the glass, I understood myself as I was sure someone else would someday know me; fully, and often, under the generous softening of shadow.
It was in this way that I first became afraid of aging, and then, later, less so. In those gathered strips of time, changing for school in the morning, changing for bed at night, ensnared by my own eyes as I marched through my bedroom in search of a lost book, I memorized myself. The skin of my stomach crested away from me and then rounded back, so that, when I ran my palm down flush with my torso, my fingers curved out in a slight wave. Yet, I realized, what set me apart now as young, and what would change for me later, was the clarity with which such contours still expressed the lively muscle which lay beneath. Closing a spot of warmth against my bare self with both my hands, I felt that I was holding something precious which did not really belong to me, but which instead existed by the momentary grace of time.
These are the kinds of thoughts that knock against me in a quiet house. But the following day, it seemed quite obvious that, while our bodies may lose the ability to articulate themselves, our minds take up the burden. And that seemed fair, so I was consoled.
The night I was exploring again, the night I found the scar, I was not thinking. I was only curious, in a haphazard sort of way, poking at the identity of my own body in the same way that I often scurried from thought to thought in an attempt to pin down my beliefs. Flattening, then protruding my shoulder blades, I noticed the thin white crescent between them and wondered at its origin. Chicken fence, maybe, or metal door latch.
Placing a single finger on the mark felt almost like a confirmation. It was part of the way I carried myself now. I slid back under the covers gingerly, feeling more like a vessel, as if there was something greater inside, now, for me to protect.