Prayers on Burning Papers

A prose poem

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I burned the love letters I wrote to you. the pages onto which I poured all my fantasies and teenage dreams, all the feelings you would never accept nor acknowledge, even as you used them to get whatever you wanted. I would like to know if you knew I would have given you everything if you had only asked. Do you know you should not ask? I wonder if you knew

I spent months silently loving You, until that gorgeous, glorious, rose-tinted spring day when You approached me with hooded eyes and something that looked vaguely like possibility tucked into the corner of Your smile. I am still not as old as you were then. I was too young

to know that every moment between us was a fissure in my being. each spot you touched — your thumb right below my navel; your lips light as stardust on my knee; the hairs on the back of your wrist tangling in mine, making them stand on end — left a crack so small I could not see, I could not feel myself being readied to shatter. I burn the love letters I wrote you, and

as fire licks the pages, eat up any crumbs of love you left unconsumed, I send out a prayer for every girl you have hurt, every girl you will hurt, every consequence you will never face. I pray for every lolita of the world, every girl who will have to learn the hard way the hard way all the many little differences…