my scar is real.

i carry it with me every day.

it is about the length of a quarter.  just below my lowest left rib.  it always looked like a circular banana slice

i haven't looked at it in a long, long time.

i'm looking at it now.

it used to be more round, i swear to god.  smooth and bumpy.  born of trauma.  not a birthmark. 
it has always stayed the same size, even as i grew - so it used to seem huge, but seems small now.

I'd just like to put out for the record - so i can be added as a statistic, stand up and be counted - my real name and a little about me.  I was too cynical and fearful of the unknown to report as a child, not to mention feeling great responsibility towards not shattering my mother and sibling's world.  It's too late for the statue of limitations and my parents are already dead.

i was standing outside by my dad and a stray dog passed by.
i went to pet the dog and it snarled at me and skitted away.

"never try and pet stray dogs," my dad told me.
"it's a cur.  see it's tail between it's legs?  it's been mistreated, so it will always be afraid and try to bite you."

even my abusive father understood that abused animals are never the same as a result.
but somehow, my abuse was rationalized enough to permit.

i just realized i was about five years old when my father explained what a clitoris is. 

and no, i didn't ask...

how old are normal kids when they learn about this?

might as well finish this while i'm on a roll...

for the sake of brevity, i'll skip the part of how the girl almost ended up a prostitute, how the girl got married while still in high school, how she became a teenage mom, how she ended up on welfare, how the husband ended up homeless, etc., and try and stick to the topic of murderous thoughts in an adopted family...

it was in a normal working class town, on a normal working class street in the midwest, that holt orphan #4708 grew up as an adopted korean girl in an all caucasion family in an all white town and began her life as thousands of adoptees before her and thousands after her would.