She lies in bed, face down on her pillow, and slowly opens her eyes turning toward the light filtering in through the French windows. The soft sheet hugging the mattress and the matching pillow covers are the colour of burnt dusk. Yes, that's a shade alright, on her palette and definitely on her canvas. She looks at her arms first and then her legs, counting all the little black spots carelessly scattered like stray mustard seeds at the bottom of a spice box, the ones that have spilled over as if to break free. She notices the tiny freckles on her skin and wonders when they began making their appearance on her already blemished skin. She makes light brushstrokes up and down her skin with just the tip of her forefinger and as it starts to feel more familiar to her, she thinks about its history. 

Skin. It’s the largest organ in the human body. It covers and contains you, safeguarding the flesh and bones beneath. But does it ever get its due? We call it superficial, merely the ‘outside’, it’s what’s on the inside that matters after all. And beauty, as they say, is just skin deep. Yet, what of all the information it holds and sometimes reveals at the slightest touch? What of all the stains, scars, and blemishes it proudly displays within the contours of our bodies? What of the maps and pathways spread out on the landscape of our very human and very raw lives? What of the memory, the vast, unforgiving, unflinching and unyielding memory of skin? Your skin remembers every single touch, taste and reflection of light against it. It records everything, especially the things you’d rather forget. Everything you’ve ever seen and experienced is inked all over it like a regrettable tattoo.  

She closes her eyes and thinks about all the different people and places that continue to dwell on the arid desert that is her skin today. Yesterday, it seemed radiant and moist, like a field of grass after the rain. She remembers how it felt to be touched by him, as they lay under the warm yellow light in the room that still holds all their secrets. How he locked his eyes with hers while lightly running his fingers up and down her belly. With all its stretch marks and scars that made her feel so conscious, until he introduced it to her as one of her erogenous zones. 

She looks at her left hand and the faint scar catches her eye pulling her back to the time a burning cigarette was stubbed out on her skin. As her flesh burned, she realized that it takes more than that to stop feeling numb. She travels back further in time and remembers the marks on her face that have since faded. But there was a time when they were visible to the naked eye and she was always asked what they were. She always replied that she didn’t know, but she knew alright, they were just the relics of someone else’s fingernails that had once dug deep into face, puncturing her tender skin and childhood innocence at the same time.

Unfinished