Scars and Fingerprints

Hi guys... This is another old one of mine. I don't really have anything new because there's been too much real life of late. But I've received a number of PM's, Feedbacks, and general comments looking for information... So hopefully those of you who wrote me anonymously will get this. I'm still here. After the semester is over I'll put more out as soon as I can. But for now be patient with me. I'll finish everything I started... Promise. For now, here's a token. And keep a look out cuz Mira is coming soon too... I'm just about through the next chapter.

And if you get a chance go vote on the Readers' Choice Awards!

* * * * * *

So I'm in the shower and it's all in my mind. I sit naked and cross legged on the tiled floor with curtains all around me and scalding water beating on my head and back. I pull needles from my skin and resew stitches that have begun to break. The water runs clear from the spigot over me washing inside my scars and fingerprints and into my ears. There it can sear away the filth that has been left in my mind rotting away at me until it falls in yellow puss rivulets to the tiled floor.

The tiles, once white, are now green with mildew fed from the fetid water and decorated with thick rusted needles. He left. Fine he left. Said it was my fault. I agreed. But only to him. I can't blame myself. There was more to it than that. So much more. But that's the way it goes. He's over and done with me and I sit here rotting. Waiting for the scar tissue around the hole in my mind (where all of the things I believed about him have been distorted, warped, changed and ripped out) to harden. Waiting for the scars across my torn fingerprints to close and fade into one of the many lines that say so much without speaking. He worked his way into my fingerprints. Fingerprints do change. They are lives. You can read a fortune upon them and, if you follow the curves, distinguish individual pain. Fingerprints burn and cry and bleed longer, harder than eyes ever could. I wash them daily, my scars and fingerprints. Caress them.

Sometimes I see him. Just long enough that he can thrust himself back into my life. Long enough for the wound to be torn farther to add bacteria to the contaminated flesh. I sit in the shower for hours crying the water that consumes me, wrinkles my fingerprints, and pinks my skin beyond the soft white naivety that it normally blushes. Cleaning doesn't help. Much. I am no nurse though the shower, as such, is my hospital. Perhaps I should let them be. Scars heal over when left alone. Sometimes vanish like old friends or the garbage left by the curb on Tuesday night. I caress my scars. Dream about him next to me. Feel him in the night tending them. Believe that he's there. Then there's light and the shower is still running. I leave it on even though the water bill is too high to pay. I like the sound of the water rushing over me. Let the water pour. Clean and hot and desensitizing, destroying prints and calluses, burning away bacteria, boiling needles to the surface of my skin. Mindless, hopeless activity. I sit in the shower without forgiven and need and lust and longing. The scars will never vanish. Never fade completely. But remind me of the torture of trust, the fool who gives over. The emptiness that follows desire. All of it written in stitches across the scars and curves of fingerprints from homemade thread and sewn with the needles that were thrown at me. I say you must move on because the only way to live is for yourself. But the mirror doesn't believe me. It remembers how he said he'd die for me and believes that there is another way. Still, it knows that he read my hands and prints and strategically placed the needles he made. Acupuncture for relationships. He said that it was for me. He cared. But too many of the needles were painful.

I ignored the scars they left until they were too deep to heal overnight. The needles sunk into my skin, tore up my arm and entered the cavity where I hid my mind and desire and hope and belief. There they ripped a hole and told him how to hurt me. Then they stayed, made a home. Set up residence and prospered pricking at my senses until I didn't know how to leave. They lived off my mind and indecision and unknowing. They changed my prints. He wanted to leave. He left. Upon leaving he withdrew most of the needles. Took them with him. Trophies on his wall. Safe for the next person he would die for. Leaving my prints to scar over. Staying around just long enough to reinsert strategic needles. Rip the hole in my mind agape. Keep the mind wound open and fresh and bleeding. This scar will remain long after my prints have taken on new identity.