One story is a lie.

My childhood is written on my body in scars. Telling only one story seemed impossible. So I decided I would tell three, all in poems.
But one is a lie.

There is a fading line on my left knee. Hardly anyone notices it anymore, but when it happened, it stretched over my knee and down my leg.


When I was five, I fell through the back of a pickup truck.

“This is how easily the pit
opens. This is how one foot sinks into the ground.”

I played in
the busted pickup truck
while Mama worked in the garden.

The truck rusted under the rain tree,
where blackberry bushes grew around it.
The creamy flowers grew into the paint,
a pink tint over rust.

I stood in the bed
and the bottom fell out.
It had rusted away
and my foot went through it
past the knee.

I screamed for my mother,
she couldn’t hear me.
Papa was cutting boards
on the circular saw.

I pulled myself out of the truck bed,
and stood at the corner of the workshop,
my sister and I were not allowed in
when power tools were on.

I called for help,
but no one could hear me,
and no one could see me.

I watched blood crawling
from my knee
to my foot.
A bit of sawdust landed in the blood,
then a bit more,
and I stood there waiting.

When the stitches (five, the doctor joked,
because I was five) were in,
and almost healed,
Mama took me out to see
the men and a tow truck
take the truck away.

There is a thin white line on the inside of my wrist.

Not Letting Go

I would not let go
of her hand,
the one with the knife in it.

Even when she pulled,
and the blood crept
down my wrist.

If it was her
or me
I would not let go.
And I didn't.

She already had
the scars
along her wrists to
hide under jelly bracelets,
or long sleeves.

I didn't want my own,
I just wanted my sister
to stay.

So we stayed,
locked arm to arm
until
I started to laugh,
and she did too.

We cleaned up the blood,
and I hid the knife
until our mother came home
to lock it up again.


There is a scar on the small of my back. I didn't know I had a scar there for years.
Back Stab

I found it
looking for something else:
a straight line
running down my back.

I remembered,
later, the time when
I fell off the ladder
or
when the tent stake stabbed me in the night
or
the barnacles on the jetty rocks
or
maybe I had a tail
and no one told me
that's why I'm always
off balance.