Scars

I trace her scars…
with love.

Not the soft kind
not the kind you read about in poems that lie.

I mean the kind of love
that knows…
what put them there.

Because those scars
they didn’t come from accidents.

They came from hands that didn’t know mercy,
from words that cut deeper than blades,
from nights that lasted too long
and mornings that came too soon.

So when I touch her,
I don’t just touch her.

I move like I’m unlearning
everything the world ever did to her.

Slow.
Careful.
Like I’m asking permission
without saying a word.

And yeah…
she still flinches sometimes.

Not always where you can see it
but I feel it.

In the silence.
In the way her body remembers
what her mouth won’t say.

She’s been broken.

Not once.
Not clean.
Not in a way that makes sense.

She was shattered,
the kind of shattered
that leaves pieces of you
in places you can’t go back to.

And still…

she went back for herself.

You hear me?

She went back…
for herself.

Picked up every piece,
even the ones that cut her,
even the ones she didn’t recognize anymore
and she rebuilt.

No blueprint.
No hands to help.
No voice telling her,
“you’re worth saving.”

So now…
she looks in the mirror
and all she sees…
are the cracks.

Like she’s something ruined.
Like she’s something used.
Like she’s something
that’ll never hold the same again.

But me?

I see a woman
who survived things
that were meant to end her.

I see strength
stitched into every fracture.

I see beauty
in the places that refused to stay broken.

She calls herself imperfect…

But I’ve never met,

never in my life met,

someone more real,
more resilient,

more perfect…

than her.

Reviews

[Michael Sun Bear]

This is a beautiful piece of writing. I want to know this woman you are describing. This is a tribute to resilience and healing and above all, unconditional love.