Healing

I had, until recently, a mole. Small, somewhat innocuous, and centered directly over my larynx. It is in nearly every picture of me and is, to me, as much a part of my face as my nose. Alas, one day, it stopped seeming so innocuous and grew dark and raised, doubtless preparing for a devastating conquest that would end in glorious victory for all things moley. The doctor pumped it full of liquid and snipped it off. As they whisked it off to the lab, I wished it a fond farewell, despite the fact that it could have bourne within it the seeds of my undoing. The scar is just now healed and my neck now cleanly spans the distance between head and shoulders. Still, the mole persists in my rare attempts at self-portraiture and in the picture of myself I carry in the wallet of my mind.


I was born with a cancer on my soul, a black fungus with tentacles and teeth that gnawed on my ego. Its grip was poisonous, but I grew used to the company. I welcomed the deadly and inescapable embrace and tried to believe it wasn't killing me. It is gone now, blasted away and burnt out of me. But who am I now that I have been freed? I sprout tentacles and cannibalize myself sooner than surrender to the Surgeon. I keep drawing the thing back in with thick lines of charcoal. I am no longer beholden to the beast, so why do I live as though I am?


I am a healed paralytic who will not walk, a restored leper who still covers her face. I want to welcome the remedy, forgetting that, beneath the bandages, I bear glorious, healed scars.