Certain boys used to press their fingertips into my skin as if they were cigarette butts and I was an ashtray. They stamped out their left over guilt that wouldn’t burn away and grounded it into my skin so that when it rains, I smell smoke and their brand of cologne. I have burn marks on the insides of my palms from when they held my hands with bonfires between theirs. I have scars on the inside of my mouth from where they left their candles burning as if I was a faulty altar. They picked flowers from every garden my body grew and left them at the feet of some makeshift effigy as if they had given me a gift. I have let people ruin me. They burned me to the ground like Rome and called my ashes beautiful ruins.

“I have scars on my hands from touching certain people”. But you told me that you don’t really like Salinger all that much even though you talk like Holden Caulfield.  When I think about you, I don’t feel cigarette burns on my skin or smoke being blown back into my face. When I think about your fingertips, I see fireflies illuminating the darkness of a spring night.