Poetry cannot be taught, nor beauty be described

Neither can you see in me something that defined

The colors of my skin.

Scars are tattoos in many ways - permanent and painful.

Yet they always fail to be seen as art or as beautiful,

Perhaps like the brightness of the stars.

 

When you are young it’s hard to understand

Why the world never agrees with all that you have planned.

For, I was running with joy with hopes and glee

Until on the ground I met myself with a scrape upon my knee.

I was my family’s joy, a daughter, a sister, a friend.

I would tell stories, sing, play, and read without end.

Then the scrape to countless blisters on my skin became

And the girl I used to be let fears enter her mind that could not escape.

 

Beneath an armor of long socks and sleeves I stood my ground,

Hidden from the world outside.

But even when a new country to cure my skin we found,

Doctors and professionals saw in me nothing worth more

Than pills ointments and creams but no aid for when my heart was sore.

 

Slap! On my hand from my grandmother. “Don’t scratch that, it’ll spread”

I was already scarred, why even bother?

“Don’t.” From my mother on letting fall a single tear.

“You are stronger than that, do not submit to any fear.”

“Look.” Said my father, “at the stars above.

You’re here for a reason, and deeply full of love.”

 

An eternity had to pass so that I find myself once again

On the shores of my youth and the beaches of my pain,

My scars recalling the truth.

I grew to call my scars by name and follow along the path

To somewhere I can heal old wounds of those still filled with wrath

At unexpected circumstances.

I endured deaths of many friends, and some goals did not achieve

Schools and jobs and people weren’t always help for me-

As the world often does to those that fall-

But my strength I did not give.

 

As all things that burn and scar, my skin’s fate shaped me.

A disease helped me decipher new worlds, people and tongues

Through the knowledge that came to be.

I stand now looking at the waves forever crashing on this rock.

Though the waters reach the ground I’m on,

They’ll never again rock

The foundations of my strength.

I face the sky and sea undistinguishable, the horizon never hinted.

But I can always direct myself to that which is above

By seeing only where the stars are imprinted.

And I can’t help but notice

That scars and stars are not all that different.