You smell like cigarettes... and now I do too.
I don't mind you smoking,
But how funny is it that you smell
like one of the things I hate the most?
That scent always holds on for dear life
onto my hair, when I come home.

I wonder if that is the reason why
I feel the need to scrub myself clean
as soon as I set a foot back into familiar territory.
Or is it the smell of you I want to forget,
so that I cannot recall that you even touched me?
That anyone has ever touched me?
Because the only way to erase the way he held onto me
seems to be to never let you hold me either.

I had grown accustomed to the feeling
of the temple that is my body
crumbling under his too strong, too rough, too fast hands.
To the void in my belly from which he took the butterflies
and replaced them with a distrust that won't go away.
I had become used to picking up the pieces,
to washing them of him one by one
and then putting them back together
with Duck Tape and Superglue
into a puzzle that no one will ever solve,

just like when you're little and figure out
that if you just press hard enough,
any piece will fit together,
even if the whole picture feels wrong
as if that action alone would rewind the world
to a time when he hadn't happened to me yet.
Now that my body has been whole for such a long time,
I cannot bare the thought of being deciphered and pulled apart,
even if it is to build the picture right again
and let you in.

I know I could come to enjoy the smell of cirarettes,
if only because it is yours.
But it was also his
and I prefer telling myself that I just don't like
the way it clings to me
because it is easier than facing the fact
that because of him, I hate the feeling of smelling like you.