It started with imperfection, and ended with an explosion. We were sitting in the parking lot at a grocery store eating ice cream. Too broke for a real date. It was Christmas Eve. Too cold for ice cream. But we were eating and I was talking and you were watching, your eyes wide and mesmerized by me. I always felt almost too powerful around you. Worshipped. It was what I needed, for once in my life, I suppose; to feel appreciated. I was the goddess of your existence. Sometimes I wonder if i was just bad at that job and that's why you left. But that's the story of the end. Not the beginning.
The beginning goes like this: we ate ice cream (Ben & Jerry's. Now Phish Food will always taste like you) and we talked and you stared and suddenly I lay my head in your lap. You asked if you could kiss me. My heart raced. I said no. Then I kissed you. I couldn't stop. I climbed into your lap. I laid your seat down. You put your hands in mine. I always dreamed of someone doing that.
I tasted your tongue, your lips, your anxiety and your excitement, and all of it tasted like chocolate (with marshmallow and caramel swirls) and then it ended, as suddenly as it began. And maybe that should have been my first indication: we can only be the gods and goddesses of our own worlds. The first kiss will never linger as long as the taste of ice cream drying in the cracks of our lips does. Our love for each other never stood a chance under the circumstances. But it tasted sweet enough for me to move forward without regret.
Just between you and me, I hope the next one's a little bitter. I'm weary of your flavor and I need someone to look at me with something deeper than worship. The thought of sweetness exhausts me. I need to be taken like medicine or a shot of vodka. I need to go straight to the head and swim through his blood. I need to make him forgive himself. The awareness of my own existence is reviving me already. I can feel myself being poured out. It's dry and painfully refreshing. He and I will console one another until we both heal. Until we forget the taste of the past.