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Peeling back the layers July 10, 2002, 2:52 p.m. "Eep!" I exclaim when I pull up my shirt sleeve. The skin on my shoulder looks like parchment, papryus. The Dead Sea Scrolls of summer bearing the crumbling story of a girl who forgot the sunscreen. The tale, for one who knows a little more, of a car trip with the windows down, the hot sun pouring in, sweat dripping along her nose, sips of warm water in a desperate attempt at hydration, music playing loud enough to make her forget that air conditioning exists. And none of it mattering because in a few hours she'd be in Potsdam. Yet now I'm home again, a week later, with a still-painful souvenir. I feel sort of a morbid fascination for the peeling skin. I pull thin, translucent layers from my shoulder and gaze at them wrapped over my finger. The skin beneath is still stiff and crinkles when I raise my arm. With a shudder I think of middle-aged California skin or of the skin of women who lie in tanning booths all winter long. It has the dry, scaley look of skin that's aged too soon. I know in my case it will last only another week at most and leave no tan, returning me instead to my pale, freckled redhead's curse. My arm feels tender and my neck sore from craning to look at the burn, and still my fingernails yearn to pick, pick, pick at the skin, removing layer after damaged layer until I reach a new, pure depth. A place the burn did not reach, a place aching with newness but not with old pain, a place to start over.
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