The Crescent Moon Scar on My Finger

"Were you using my knife?”—How a Kitchen Accident Became a Lasting Reminder of My Best Friend

There’s a crescent-moon scar on my finger, a faint white line that sometimes catches the light. Every time I see it, I think of my friend Emily.

It wasn’t her who cut me. No, the injury was entirely my doing—an accident in the kitchen. I was trying to pry open a frozen baguette with a sharp knife, my stupidity only registering when the blade skipped off my would-be lunch and straight into my index finger.

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Shocked, I looked at my mangled flesh, and in the split second before the bleeding started, I knew it was going to be bad.

“Emily!” I screamed. We were twenty, living in a manky student house in Brighton, England. Within seconds, she was beside me.

“Fuck!” she shrieked, staring at my bloodied hand. “Put it under the tap!”

I did as instructed, my blood circling the drain. Emily’s eyes darted to the kitchen counter.

“Were you using my knife?” she asked, disgusted.

Her question stung. A sizable chunk of flesh was protruding from me—couldn’t she be annoyed later?

At the time, I was hurt. But fifteen years on, I laugh at the memory. Because that was us. Two young women arguing about an old knife in a filthy student kitchen, both of us stubborn and headstrong. And maybe that moment—Emily, more worried about her knife than my finger—was characteristic of how we loved one another. Yes, I was bleeding, but we were like sisters bickering over a borrowed and stained beloved cream jumper.

Despite, or maybe in explanation of, Emily’s blunt response, I must say this in her defence: She took care of me a lot.

Being my friend wasn’t easy because I was always in a crisis. Sure, I was kind and loving, but my love never extended to myself. This lack of self-love fucked things up a lot. I’d get wasted and wind up in dodgy situations. I’d obsess over guys who were so clearly no good. I’d cut myself in other, more intentional ways. I didn’t want to be miserable; it’s just that I was broken and hadn’t done any work to fix myself yet.

Emily was endlessly patient.

And she stood up for me when other friends or boyfriends called me crazy. She was a fierce protector when I couldn’t protect myself, but she’d always tell me how it was, too. In return, she had my undying loyalty. A you-say-jump, I-say-how-high? sort of friendship.

After my kitchen accident, a boyfriend took me to the hospital to have the wound cleaned and glued down. I was lucky that the slanted angle of the cut would make for an easier heal. Now, nothing more than a curved white line remains.

When I look at the scar, I imagine Em and me all those years ago.

I imagine her knife on the counter. And I imagine her running to me. I remember us fondly: two beautiful, imperfect girls with our whole lives ahead of us. We had no way of knowing. How could we? That in just under a decade, Emily would be gone. That I would survive the same disease that took her. That in the many ways I would carry her with me, the smallest of all would be the thin, pale line on my finger.

The crescent-moon scar is a portal through time, and through it, I remember who we used to be: a broken girl and her beloved best friend.

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Do you have an object—a scar, a song, a place—that instantly brings back memories of someone you’ve lost? I’d love to hear about it in the comments 🌙

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Thanks so much for reading! Please hit the ❤️ button if you made it all the way to the end; it really buoys my sensitive soul.

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I’ll be back next week. Until then, thank you for reading, and take good care of yourself!

Emma

xx

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