Freckles

When I was ten years old,

I developed freckles,

and cried for days.

I hated them.

I didn’t like the way

the dark spots stood out,

making the rest of my skin look paler.

Like ten year olds do,

I held a grudge.

All I wanted was for my face

to be what I wanted.

No scars, no freckles,

just the same skin

from hairline to collarbone.

I hated these freckles

with the same undying energy

as I hated the pink scar

underneath my left eyebrow.

It took four stitches to close,

and it puckered funny when I smiled.

When I was fourteen, I cut my eyebrow,

the same one I cut seven years earlier,

on a neighborhood adventure

with my older brother.

I learned to duck when he swung sticks that day.

When this eyebrow got cut a second time,

I was much older,

doing things only marginally smarter,

trying to carry too many things at once,

and refusing to take two trips.

Blood dripped in my eye,

and I waited to get stitches for hours.

When I got it closed, my only concern

was for my eyebrow, that it wouldn’t brush flat.

That same summer, I got more freckles.

They ran down my arms and shoulders,

and joined the others on my nose.

I still didn’t like them very much.

They were too irregular,

too dark to be beautiful.

I turned seventeen last month,

and even with my contacts out,

I can see scars on my nose,

freckles on my chin,

and the twin scars in my right eyebrow.

The scar by my left eye is still pink,

it still puckers when I laugh,

and I still get asked about it at school.

My skin isn’t smooth.

I’ve been alive too long to keep it that way.

It’s far from the same color,

but I don’t throw fits over freckles.

The dark brown freckles on my nose

feel like the warm sun

of a grade school summer,

and the white scars in odd places

are testaments to a ten year old’s

excitement about life.

I don’t fret over a sunburn

from playing tennis too long without sunscreen,

because the red doesn’t stay,

but the experience does.

And all the colors on my face

that my ten year old self spent weeks worrying about

are just the brushstrokes and pigments

that paint me into me,

and if I didn’t love them

just as much as I love the stories behind them,

then I could never be myself.