PERSON Poem: The Beautiful Scar, by Randall Taylor

I’m sorry.
I wouldn’t be surprised if these were my first words,
Words I probably spoke more than my own name.

You’re just a speed bump in everyone’s lives! Just go away already!
I’m sorry.

No one even likes you, I don’t know why you’re even still alive anyway!
I’m sorry.

We always lose when you’re on our team! You suck! Everybody loses because you suck!
I’m sorry.

You’re the one making things like this! You never even really cared about me in the first place!
I’m sorry.

Boy if you don’t sit your ass down somewhere, damn! Why can’t you be normal!?
I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.

Scars don’t apologize for taking up residence on your skin
or in your heart. They apologize
for being seen by prying eyes,
for being burned and drank away

by tequila and whiskey.

Left to hollow out a crater of the flesh,
they merely sit in patience and wait to be accepted
like blue roses that bloom in snowfall’s hush.
Scars don’t ask for a mirror, but they do
vent to the veins about their hope for one day
to find the person capable of letting them
see daybreak and its warmth hug the wounds.

Scars don’t ask to be carried,
they don’t ask to be born
into a world of blood thicker
than water. They pray for the moment
when they can bask in silence
without the curtains gossiping about
how they let that happen to them.

Scars don’t ask to be healed.
Sometimes, they shouldn’t be.
Not as some twisted badge of honor,
but as a purple heart for the valor
and fortitude in surviving the mental warfare
waged for their right to not have
to view the world from halfway down.

Scars don’t ask to be held at night,
even when they should,
even when they deserve it,
because they don’t know how
to cradle tenderness in arm
without the constant fear
of their ugly scaring love away.

Scars don’t ask to be beautiful.
They plant their roots in the skin,
bloom white lilies from the stargazer seeds
left behind after the deaths of the old ones,
water them with fountains of warmth
and elixirs of benevolence, and bask
in the blossoming of their fleshed smiles.

Scars don’t need to be radiant,
or magical, or majestic.
They find their beauty
in their existence, the mortal,
the ethereal, they live
in the light of a dove’s kiss
from paradise above
and drink the ashes
of crisped phoenix feathers
because scars aren’t beautiful
or ugly, but ancient
reassurance of the gentle
inevitability in being human.