I was the toddler who fell down the stairs
while inside the walker
because no one wanted to watch a kid
who wasn't theirs.
Clumsy
or maybe just overlooked, I was
A child who was always tripping over something,
or falling behind the couches and
biting through their lip.
They realized
I was prone to
leaving scars.
At six years old
my dad bought me my first bike
the pink streamers poured down
from the white handlebars
as he lifted me onto the seat I’d soon learn to love
only after I fall down and scrape my knees
down to raw skin
over and over again,
wound over wound.
But I mastered the technique,
patience and good balance
healed my beat up knees and bruised arms
as I flew through the neighborhood on my loving bicycle,
racing with my sisters
the wind in our hair and our hearts pounding with excitement
as if we were driving cars, not pedaling Barbie bikes.
12 years old
the bike no longer meant anything
to me,
it was used, scratched up, not the same bike it once was,
or maybe
I had grown up.
The pink streamers and the seat I had learned to love
were no longer enough.
I entered sixth grade with high hopes
new friends, new school, new adventure.
My uncle once told me middle school were the best years
of his teenage life
but life has a funny way of taking wrong turns.
It wasn't any single moment
but piles of moments stacked upon the other
waiting to collapse
and I no longer had the patience or balance
to hold myself up anymore.
Friends had been lost, feelings
hurt. Words were twisted
and family became distant,
so did I.
Blades had become my best friend,
my worst enemy
a dark cloud took over my mind,
I was breathing, but always wishing
I would stop.
It was then I realized
that maybe I was prone to leaving
my own scars.