my dreams remind me of an ocean

She looked at me with those warm brown eyes, the color of hot chocolate when I dump in five or six scoops of powder instead of two. Her lips quivered, the way they did she was cold, or in this case, lonely. They probably no longer tasted like her cinnamon lip gloss, but like vodka and menthol cigarette smoke and the saliva of another boy, and when I thought of her tasting like that, I couldn’t even look at her.

That night, I felt like destroying something beautiful. I wanted to yell at her until her mascara smeared down her cheeks; I wanted to make her feel the ice that was paralyzing my chest. Because one lapse in judgment, ten seconds, could undo months of forehead kisses and stuffed animals won at theme parks and the things done sneakily under bedsheets.

But in the end, when she started crying and my voice felt hoarse, I didn’t feel powerful. I just felt emptier than when I’d started, and like a dick to boot. I could barely hear her apologies and pleas through my pulse pounding in my ears.

Finally, I got up off of her bed and simply walked out the door. I didn’t grab my favorite sweatshirt or my Kickass DVD or even the ring with the little diamond in it that I’d saved up all summer to get her. Those things would always make me think of her anyways, and they’d probably end up in my trash can after a week or two.

We hadn’t been friends before we started dating, so I got the luxury of not even considering being friends after. She left me a couple of voicemails and text messages, but I deleted them without hearing what she had to say. Even though I was ignoring them, they stopped far before I felt they should have.

I saw her in the grocery store about two months after that night. By that point, my mind had made her into a monster, and a horrific one at that. But when I saw her, she was just wearing a hoodie and picking out breakfast cereals, and I couldn’t hate her. I just couldn’t.

When she noticed me, she gave me a small, sad smile with the left side of her lips, that seemed to say, “I’m still sorry I was a bitch and hurt you like that.” I shrugged my shoulders and gave her a little smile that I meant to say, “Hey, it happens. I’m ok.”

And then I walked towards the pop tarts, she walked towards the oatmeal, and I never saw her again.

Disclaimer: This is already published in two publications. Plagiarize it and die. (No but really, please please don’t plagiarize it.)