obligatory

By the time Laurel had slept with a collection of men, her body had small memories of these seductions. Marked. On different occasions they would watch her in the daylight as she lay in bed. Softly touching scars as if they sensed the lingering of another. Perhaps they still felt the patterns another man’s hands had run. Down the valley of her back; caressing her vertebrae, up the curve that was made where her hips met her ribcage, to the nape of her neck they rested. Laurel felt their intimidation. As if in their sense of ownership they felt the ghosts of lust. She found it foolish that they expected her to be new. As if only in their beds she could exist. She had no past or present in their idealizations.
These scars that held memories of past lovers were cruel and demystifying. In there silent revenge upon her tainted canvas was an urge to make a signature. It must have been pleasurable, to know in some way she carried a sign of their presence, that even when months had passed and she had found herself in many trysts following, she carried a token of their sex. However hard their intentions were made to fasten themselves to her. She gazed at her body; the scars were merely an afterthought. She could not recall the way she laid in bed with past lovers.