A women that I have met only once before

[Cate]

A woman that I have met only once before
showed me the scar from her tummy tuck
She says that she can't feel her lower stomach
It's a side effect
I can touch it if I like - I don't

Her scar is a year old - faded pink
She tells me she's thinking of getting a tattoo
if the scar is healed enough
She's going to ask the tattoo artist this afternoon
She asks if I have any tattoos
I don't but my husband does

I tell her I don't mind her scar
It reminds me of the one from my c-section
She asks if she can see it - my scar
No, it's too low you don't want to see it
She laughs, she seems to accept this
as if it were an answer

She shows me a scar on her arm
She was burnt there as a baby
She thinks they had to do a skin graft
She's looking at me expectantly
I mentally go over my body
I must have something I can show her
No, none that are comparable
None that deserve baring

[lizzytysh]

Hi Cate ~

With two misspellings that I saw preceding it, your very last word puts much into question about that sentence's intent. Is it spelled correctly or should it be "bared"? If "beared" is correct, I understand it wholly differently. Thanks.


~ Lizzy

[Cate]

It should be bared - Thank you Lizzie - My spelling is terrible - I rely heavily on spell check. I'm very glad that you pointed it out to me.
Happy New Years!

[lazariuk]

Thanks Cate

That reminded me of my first scar. It was from an operation that was done to help me with a testicle that didn't want to come out and face the world. I was 6 at the time.
The memory though was of the time before the operation when in the children's ward they were shaving pre-pubic hair and painting me with stuff. The memory was of the fact that they didn't place a curtain around me and let all the other kids on the ward watch. I remember how much I didn't like that.
The second scar I got from an angel who hit me just above my lip or that might have been my first scar as it was right around the same time.

Jack

[lizzytysh]

Hi Cate ~

Thanks for the clarification. Your poem describes an intriguing experience of intimate sharing. Did it happen on your day out yesterday? I'm wondering what may have prompted her to want to share so personally with you... the holidays and wanting intimacy at some level, even if only through sharing some scars from one's life; an extraordinary sense of trust that you personally engender? It was just a very interesting exchange that makes me curious. I like your poem.


~ Lizzy

[Cate]

Hi Lizzy - I'm going to p.m. you the story. I don't want to share her story in an open forum.

[William]

Intriguing and well written, to my mind. I enjoyed it very much.

[lizzytysh]

Ha. Just noticed what I did with your word. I meant baring vs. bearing, not bared vs. beared. How easily a slip comes by.


~ Lizzy

[jimbo]

yes cate this was interesting to me.

you must be a very kind individual...?

[DBCohen]

Cate,

I was intrigued by your poem about scars posted in the context of this forum. It brought to mind the opening section of LC’s novel The Favourite Game:

1

BREAVMAN KNOWS a girl named Shell whose ears were pierced so she could wear the long filigree earrings. The punctures festered and now she has a tiny scar in each earlobe. He discovered them behind her hair.
A bullet broke into the flesh of his father's arm as he rose out of a trench. It comforts a man with coronary thrombosis to bear a wound taken in combat.
On the right temple Breavman has a scar which Krantz bestowed with a shovel. Trouble over a snowman. Krantz wanted to use clinkers as eyes. Breavman was and still is against the use of foreign materials in the decoration of snowmen. No woollen mufflers, hats, spectacles. In the same vein he does not approve of inserting carrots in the mouths of carved pumpkins or pinning on cucumber ears.
His mother regarded her whole body as a scar grown over some earlier perfection which she sought in mirrors and windows and hub-caps.
Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple.

And, as an afterthought, this poem from The Spice-Box of Earth also comes to mind:

As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill,
So my body leaves no scar
On you, nor ever will.

When wind and hawk encounter,
What remains to keep?
So you and I encounter
Then turn, then fall to sleep.

As many nights endure
Without a moon or star,
So will we endure
When one is gone and far.

I wander if you had any of those in mind when posting your poem here?

And by the way, if you’re going to post Lizzy privately, please don’t announce it openly, because the rest of us are getting jealous. Thanks. And I also liked your poem, in case I didn’t say so earlier.

[Cate]

I love both this passage and this poem.

I wander if you had any of those in mind when posting your poem here?

Not at the front of my mind, but I’m sure I was influenced. This is basically a journal entry from November that I tried to make into a poem.

At the time I met this women I was on a Leonard Cohen binge. I had just consumed both novels and several books of poetry. I was also listening to his voice in the car, watching him on you-tube and reading posts about his work on this forum. I think that it’s very possible that this influenced the way my mind processed events, how I was interpreting her actions.

And by the way, if you’re going to post Lizzy privately, please don’t announce it openly, because the rest of us are getting jealous.

Etiquette note taken. I don’t usually whisper in public.

[Steven]

Hi Cate,

Got to wonder if that woman would be as forthcoming with revealing emotional
scars to a women that she's only met once. Men, generally, aren't too shy in
similarly showing physical scars to even strangers (under certain circumstances)
and may sometimes consider those kinds of scars to be badges of honor.
Emotional scars, that's a whole 'nuther story. The poem quoted by DB with
the line: "As the mist leaves no scar..." is one of my all time favorites.