the three girls in the pictures go to the same school.
minya.
where mangoes hang from trees like overgrown yoyos.
i spoke to the headmaster about tribal scars.
he told me that the children were scarred according to the number of failed pregnancies that preceded them.
or if they had died and come back to life.
or if they were born ill.
i wondered what it would be like to go throughout my life with an engraved reminder of my deceased siblings.
surely i would ask myself:
what would they look like?
how would they laugh?
would mom have liked them better?
she does.
why did i survive?
or what of the engraved reminder that i, since my first breath, have been living on borrowed time.
second chance time.
should i not see every sight as doubly-blessed?
precious, delicate, and undeserved.
why was my knot retied if the Fates had supposedly decided it must be cut?
fickle Fates.
why did i survive?
and illness?
what if each of us donned scars to recite or betray our weaknesses?
i wondered what the shape of scars would be and why.
3 sideways for selfishness. 6 for pride. an X for incontinence.
to each his own until we were all marred and deformed with our own fleshy scarlet letters.
would masochism arise as we tried to change one transgression to another?
doesn't it already.
how would social hierarchies change?
would they?
would some of us be hated, shunned, and cast out for the shape of our scars?
or would the mutual revelation of weakness bring us together?
after all, none of us are perfect, and now we'd have proof.
let us be one.
no.
we've shown time and again that
difference, sadly, breeds division and subdivision more than anything else.
perhaps, at least, scars would ensure our honesty.
