Scar tissue changes quickly and each day my bellybutton looks different. Not just different to the way it looked before surgery, but different to the way it looked yesterday. Minute fissures have appeared, ragged and bleach-white; puncture wounds are slowly losing their bite; the swelling pulls back.
You were the first person to see it – fresh and crusted. I sent a photograph before you came over to tenderly kiss my tummy.
Sometime after we have broken up, I remember this. The time when your thumb caught on my stitches, the pain in my skin like a spur to the stomach.