Scars from a Semester

It's easiest to see the scars when it's cold. One is on my left hand, on the middle knuckle. Sometime while I was lugging my luggage from Heathrow to my hostel the handle of the rolling one took off a piece of my skin. I still have my London transit card that I bought that day. It's called an Oyster card and it's sitting on my desk. The jacket that it came in says, "Don't throw away your Oyster card, you can use it again and again." It's not the comma splice that bugs me. London can make up their own English grammar and I don't care. I just don't like it because it's false. I can't use my Oyster card anymore. But I still won't throw it away.

The other scar is on my right hand, on the middle knuckle. It is in perfect symmetry with the first scar, except that it is four-and a-half months fresher. The handle of my rolling luggage gave it to me on the day I left Spain.

In Spanish, notable sentences like questions and exclamations get punctuation on both sides. My body is making up its own grammar, where notable periods get periods on each luggage-pulling fist. The little round scar on the left let me know that something was definitely going to happen and the little round scar on the right let me know that it was finished. Now I hold my cold fists at my sides and try to read this sentence inside me. I question, I exclaim, I declare, and I hope these scars never heal lest I start to doubt.