Striations

What are these striations upon my flesh?

Each stripe burnt deep into my very core …

Forming a bar code ….

Marking purchases and their cost

Every one showing the back story

Of my soul …

Lines of joy, love, happiness …

Graduation, marriage, birth of children …

Stripes carved to show a triumph, a landmark …

Other stripes …. Pain, loss, soul searing events

Each of which leave behind a mark … A scar …fading over time … yet… there

What factory was this piece of my pain manufactured in?

Place of origin.. date stamped …

Each striation stamped with it’s makers mark:

Here the faded stripe named Michelle …

How my heart ached when she didn’t feel the same ..

Bone deep that one ..

From high school …

A jagged striation shows the rejection I felt

A cost paid in longing, frustration, hurt …

Seared in the pathways of teenaged angst …

Healed by another later …

Yet the channel is deep …

Here a thick red one wherein I failed

To protect my sister from the guy that assaulted her

All those years ago …

The one that was never caught …

The pain now muted, yet still throbs occasionally …

A few painful stripes earned as a child

When I was crippled by a disease in my feet ..

Marks denoting the heartfelt pain of watching…

Yearning, longing … praying …

Wishing to be able to run, play… laugh

Crimson stripes purchased at the cost of a child’s soul …

Striations in livid blues, blacks, purples … crimson …

We all have a code …

A bar code stamped upon our psyche …

Which if read by the scanner of God …

Tally’s up the costs of a life lived

A life loved

A life hated

Every blow leaving striated marks

Each joy causing others to fade …

Most have indeed faded over time …

Some overwritten by gains …

Yet the final line stamped …

Blasted through the others…

Overshadowing … rewriting me from inside out…

That line you parsed …

When you strayed …

Now I know …

The true cost

Of my mortal soul

You set the Bar …

Then:

You broke the Code …