Scarring Begets Courage

Notifications arrive like hailstones on a windshield,
each one leaving a tiny starburst crack in the day.
We move through crowds lit blue by phone screens,
our disappointments tucked behind passwords,
our hurts archived like unopened emails.

Still…

The body keeps score in quiet graffiti,
a pale line on a knuckle, a silver seam on a knee,
each mark a trail on a map that once led through fire.

Then comes the wound no bandage can reach.

A goodbye lands like a wrecking ball swung through a glass house.
A trust breaks open like a dam in spring runoff,
flooding rooms thought long secured.

Days become mirrors fogged by breath and memory.
The heart, stubborn as a city rebuilding after a storm,
stacks one trembling brick upon another,
until the scar settles beneath the skin,
glowing unseen like cooled lava beneath a mountain.

Forgiveness…

Arrives quietly,
not as a trumpet or absolution's grand parade,
but like ivy finding purchase on a ruined wall.
It does not erase the crack.
It teaches light how to enter it.

The old hurt remains, softened at the edges,
like sea glass once sharp enough to draw blood.
What was carried as armor becomes understanding;
what was clenched in the fist opens, at last,
into an empty hand capable of blessing.

And then…

At a crosswalk, a child lifts an arm,
displaying a cartoon-covered bandage like a medal won at recess.
The scraped elbow beneath it is no larger than a postage stamp,
yet the grin surrounding it could power a skyline.

We smile back, both of us understanding something wordless:
this is perhaps the first signature life has written upon fresh skin.
Many more may follow. Some will fade like chalk after rain.
Others will carve deep canyons through the soul.
Yet every scar, whether flesh or feeling, becomes another tool in the pack,
another lantern for dark terrain,
proof that healing is not the opposite of injury but its unlikely companion,
and that survival, again and again,

learns to call itself strength.