Your Ashtray

Getting ready for work, I put on a pair of tights dug out from the back of my drawer. I stretched the sheer fabric over my left calf and when it reached my thigh I saw it—a solitary, perfect hole, exactly matching the mark on my exposed skin, still slightly raised in a small circle the size of a cigarette butt. Your cigarette butt.

I’m back at your house your birthday. You’re drunk out of your mind, and we’re standing with a group of your friends. I was so nervous to meet them, but you made me feel so wanted, letting everyone know I was yours. And I was. You were with me the whole night, holding my hand, my waist, my eye contact from across the room the few, fleeting moments you left my side. Now we’re on your front lawn and you’re smoking a cigarette, and lean in close to me, and look me in the eyes, and I don’t see anything else, or hear your friends screaming around us. Its just you, and me, and your lips forming the words: “I’m so happy you’re with me.”

And suddenly my thigh is burning and I flinch away. The trance is broken, and there it is, the perfect circle. The cigarette between your uncertain fingers has burnt through the tights to my skin on contact. I laughed at how perfect the mark was, like a hole punch. You were so concerned and embarrassed and said you were sorry about a million times (What I would give to hear that simple word now). I laughed adoringly through your apologies and insisted I didn’t feel a thing, and you kissed me and we both forgot. All of your friends looked on, and saw that you were happy to be with me. And I was happy to be with you.

It gives life a cinematic effect, when in retrospect, you see the symbolic foreshadowing—the violent break from the temporary joy of just being with you—You left me without a warning, and this sting lingered for months, and when it comes back, you’re never there to kiss it away.

I run my finger on the outline of the scar of the same perfect circle on my thigh. It is mostly faded, but now I feel the sharp sensation again. For a moment, I yearn to keep the tights. To hold onto them, as desperate proof that we were something. That at one point you were so happy to be with me. You pretend like we never happened. I peel them off and put them in the back of my drawer—they are proof that we did. I always hated cigarettes, but you were the exception to all of my rules.