#scarsproject

you never took the time to look at me after you had taken off all my clothes and scattered them across the backseat or the floor of the bathroom or lost them between the cushions of the couch in our friends basement I don't think you ever once actually saw me naked you just liked the way my breath sounded wet against your ear

I don't know why I lied and told you I was cold the night you touched me and I shivered

I crossed state lines and spent nights staring at the floor for just a chance to see you smile and you left me somewhere between the last shot and the secrets I thought meant something

she used his words like knives and watched the blood drip onto the carpet such a pretty color pain she planned to let him cut her until there wasn't any skin left unscarred

I listened until I had words ingrained and my brain was aching from the knife he used to make his point but it wasn't enough to watch me bleed he was after the entire muscle that beat me daily because I could only take so much and when every sound is the pulsing of someone else too close to me I begin to wonder  what all the screaming was about

he did just fine with a whisper

the beginning letter was the same. but he never liked anything that demanded commitment. so he lasted in lust.

she scrawled letters onto paper until it wasn't enough and then she switched to carving into skin

he never knew he hurt her. all the fumbling in the dark. and she was careful not to put them in places. he would pay attention to.

and when he left she had scars to prove she loved him and he had another tally mark to prove he never cared

They had just finished telling each other about their scars. She had one on her cheek from when she ran into a barbed wire fence. He had one on his leg from a motorcycle accident that she wasn't ready to hear about yet. He nodded and gave her hand a little squeeze.

That night he asked her about the last guy, the one before him. She wouldn't say his name - couldn't say his name. 

"That guy with the hat..." there was no question in his voice and she mumbled yes into his shoulder. "It's just that you didn't mention him earlier."

"Earlier when?" She was confused. They had never had a conversation about ex-people.

"When we were talking about scars."

the ink runs like tears a stain waiting to form on the edges of a scar