I wouldn't call them scars. Our bodies are ancient calendars marked with times and places. Tonight, you are not real. You are the desperate ocean lapping at the shoreline trying to take back the secrets in the bottles cast off by lovers, and children, letters to the dead sometimes. They are not your secrets, but they came to you first. They are full of feelings you have once felt or will feel. The bottles glisten in the sand mockingly, beautifully, painfully, like window shopping for jewelry you'll never be able to afford. You never expect to want the glass back after it has been pulled out of you. But the stories inside are your stories now too. You cast them off in the same manner hoping somone better than the sea will find them. The story about your cancer, your mother, the love you feel right now, the love returned, the time you thought of the beauty of a flower, the flower you killed to show someone how beautiful it was, the realization of the importance of stillness. All those stories like broken bottles in your skin. Like jewels encrusted on a big brass door leading to a room you live in. But tonight, you are the ocean at high tide, finally getting your bottles back.

If I could write you a letter, it would be a mile long
And I would fill it with everything I meant to say
Every love note I had saved for a later date combined into one
Because that later date came all too soon and your love has expired and I need you to know these things:
i. I love you. I love you with every fiber and nerve and cell in my
   bruised and scarred body, and nothing will change the longing I have
   for the comfort of your arms.
ii. I regret nothing. And you know what I'm talking about, and I'm  
    telling you now that I regret nothing. I was loved and I would not
    change a thing. You set me free.
iii. You are human. You will royally **** up just like everyone else.
     That's okay. You don't have to save everyone. Save yourself.
vi. No matter what, I care.

do not date a girl
who writes.
she will internalize
everything,
carve poems
into your eyelashes
instead of
kissing them,

she will analyze you,
calculate age
from the rings
your coffee cup
leaves
instead of refilling it.

she will memorize
the way your
lips curl around steam,
but not that you
take it
two sugars,
no cream.

she will read your
palm instead of
holding it
against her chest.

she will not
blink
when you leave,
because she is
already
romanticizing it.