You've left marks on me that will never go away, but I'd never known that a scar could be this beautiful. If this year had a name, it would be yours. Not the year of you, but the year of missing you. The year of both violently letting you go and desperately holding onto you, all in the same breath. I devote whole days to remembering the vibration of your lips against my ear. I spend weeks in the ocean until I can feel you next to me again. Sometimes we are floating; sometimes we are drowning. 

I've never known a man that loved a women greater than his own desire to succeed. They all wanted to be the best, have the best, love the best. It seemed to me that their whole reason for even loving a woman in the first place was so that they could claim her. They'd hold her heavy heart in their hands like it was just another trophy on the shelf, her breasts mounted up on the wall next to it with all the other animals they'd shot down. And they'd love her just long enough for her to lose her shine. "There's always another fish in the sea," they'd sneer through their smirks as they headed toward the ocean, spear in bloodied hand. 

People get inside you. They grow roots; sometimes like roses, sometimes like weeds. Somehow, he was both. He lit fires in me that would burn for years, but it was the kind of burn that you never want to stop. To this day, my tired lungs smell of smoke, and my favorite clothes smell of him.