A day spent floating on the river left my chest seared so badly that I hissed between my teeth when anything touched it, even the flat, broad palm of the sun. I couldn't bring myself to look at what I'd done. I kept my eyes locked on my face while putting on makeup in the mornings, as though the skin below my neck was a deformed child, or a man weeping in the street.
I didn't heal for a long time. For weeks and weeks the wounds remained, scabs tracked across my flesh like roaches, my skin crusted and weeping like that Italian sculpture of Mary Magdelene. It will heal, be patient, said my mother, a woman who has lived for years and has seen the way things are.
I knew in my heart that this wasn't true. I looked at the curve of my breast, the white skin suddenly swirling into a mottled, angry purple, the transparent strips of skin my fingers tore off like the waterlogged membrane of a boiled egg, and I knew that this time, I had damaged myself beyond repair. All summer, I went to class and went to work and hit the treadmill at the gym while the skin over my heart curled up and withered like dead leaves. I saw it clinging to the inside of the shirts that I pulled off at night.
I shed myself gradually, like a snake, the purple fading back into white in stages, like some bizarre, slow-motion reverse sunset. My flesh knit back together, slowly and methodically, as if under the hands of a pensive, squinting seamstress. I should have been relieved, but when I cupped one hand over the healing skin so I could only see the part that was never burned, I knew the score. Things never go back to the way they were.
These days I can barely make out the slight discoloration just above my left breast. There is a jagged line, so faint that I am the only one who can see it, or maybe that's just because I'm imagining it. But for some reason, it haunts me. I wonder if it will resurface when I age, the damage blooming over my heart like a badge. I wonder if cancer lurks beneath the surface, biding its time, waiting until I have more to lose.
It's true that I have no faith in the goodness of things, in this body created to renew itself, like waves on a shore. I was raised by credit card bills, the cultural anecdotes of skin damage from tanning booths and emotional baggage from one-night-stands. Anything that feels good, looks good now, you'd better believe you'll pay for it later, and the bill comes at the end of the month, never the beginning.
This is why I watch my healed skin, affronted, suspicious. It's so hard for me to believe that the damage I inflict can simply leave one day, a day like every other, simply walk off and leave me open-mouthed and braced for impact.
