My Professor's Dirty Little Secret
A few faint bruises lingered along my ribs from the gym, reminders that I didn’t know how to pull punches, even with myself.
Across my left shoulder blade ran a thick scar, pale and uneven, slashing diagonally down toward my spine. I traced it absently with my fingertips, the skin raised but familiar. Eight years old, I thought, remembering the crash. The burning metal. The sound of my mother’s voice before everything went white. It never fully healed right, but it had stopped hurting long ago.
Tattoos covered much of what the scar didn’t, black ink coiling down my arms in deliberate, measured symmetry. Script in Latin along one forearm read Vincit qui se vincit, He conquers who conquers him