The scar you have on your knee

Luvvie Ajayi Jones

It’s on my right knee.

In the shape of a chicken’s foot, a lightning strike with three legs, and is a dirty purple color that to this day I claim is the gravel that was left inside and my skin grew over. 

I must have been about 10 or 11, it was when we were living on Pryor Rd in the late 80’s and I was riding my ten speed through the neighborhood behind our house. It began to rain and I hurried too fast around a turn, spilling onto that super tiny almost soft (but actually little daggers) kind of dusty gravel. My knee was black and felt like it was burning. I made it home as fast as I could, crying through the house to find Mom. She administered first aid in her bedroom bathroom by pouring hydrogen peroxide generously over my bloody dirty knee and I felt so betrayed by that sizzling sting. Then Neosporin, then bandaid, then a summer-long scab that I thought my mom’s friend Marcia’s pool would heal. And no amount of dog licks worked either. 

So, 35 years later, the scar remains.