Scars

A scar is skin that remembers. After an injury — a cut, an operation, a burn, an accident, a birth — your body closes the wound. But it does not close it the way it was before. It lays a different tissue over it. Firmer, less elastic, often lighter or darker than the surrounding skin, sometimes raised, sometimes sunken. The site is healed. And yet it remains marked forever.

Medicine explains the process matter-of-factly: collagen, fibroblasts, phases of wound healing. That is correct. And it tells only half the story. Because a scar is more than repaired skin. It is a visible memory. A sign your body sets so that you do not forget what once happened here.