A Reflection: Ugly

Glue over stitches over clean incisions. In time, the glue yellows and crusts. The wounds scab, dry, and flake, swelling and pulling on skin that dies and is reborn.

Death, rebirth, scab, death, rebirth, scab.

Evidence of it all on your clothes and towels and shower floor.

In the end, the last rebirth remains, and purple lines persist where there were once none. Discolorations denote what happened there: skin once severed is sealed, but never again the same.

And this is the ugly truth of healing: you are new, and you will never be the same.