🥺🥺

“Cora works the lotion into all my cracks and crevices as the familiar medical/old-lady smell of the oily cream fills the room. My beige compression garments slump like snakeskin on my desk. After a year, they seem more me than the purply-pink swirling scars of my actual body.”
― Erin Stewart, Scars Like Wings

“I used to think of my skin as one continuous unit, but mine is more like Sara's bedspread beneath me-- a morbid quilt stitched together. Some pieces are original, some are scarred over, and some are grafted in from other parts of my body after the doctors played epidermal musical chairs.”
― Erin Stewart, Scars Like Wings

“I'll be right back," she says, and as soon as she disappears into the next room, I feel like someone has yanked my social crutch out from under my arm. I'm floundering. All I can think about is Emery coming back so I can have someone to hide behind.”
― Akemi Dawn Bowman, Starfish

“It was the tick marks above my bed, underneath the bunk on top of mine, that got me thinking about when I'd last extended my hand to anyone. Or anyone extended their hand to me.
Someone who lived in the dorm before me had recorded their days at university like a prison sentence, carving into the wooden slats under Jarred's bed, and, one night a week ago, reaching up to run a finger over the tallies, I touched the gnawing in me. I realized it had worked its way around inside, gouging, for a while. It must be a hole I've carried since the start of freshman year. (Though sometimes I wonder if it carried over from years before that.)
Simple tally marks etched with a pocketknife woke me to my hollowness.”
― S.K. Ali, Love from A to Z