Anyway, I found this quote buried among picture on my iTouch, and I needed to write a story about it. So here it is:
I dropped a tear in the ocean. The day I find it is the day I stop missing you.
My hands were clasped around my legs, my face turned toward the ocean. The wind tugged gently at my loose hair. I could taste the saltiness of tears on my tongue and feel them slide silently down my cheeks.
You used to love it when I wore my hair down. I would do it for you and only you. You would wrap a strand of it around your finger and examine it, finding red in all the brown. I love it when you do that. Or at least I did.
The wind caught my tears as they fell off the end of my chin and whipped them away. You might have joked about it, taking a tear on your thumb and holding it into the Atlantic breeze like an offering to the gods.
But there would be no tears if it weren’t for you. If you were not gone, I wouldn’t feel like my heart was slowly breaking into pieces. If it weren’t for you, I would not sit with my arms wrapped around myself as if to keep from breaking apart.
I never expected to lose you. So maybe that is why it hit me so hard when I did. You were always so alive, so there, your skin hot and electric against mine. Your very presence seemed to take up space, as if you were so much more than just one boy.
It was hard to believe you were gone. That I would never see your grin again, or hear your laugh, or lay in bed long after you’d left with my lips pressed together, trying to hold your last kiss on the tip of my tongue.
Now the only things I have of you are my memories and the faded gray sweatshirt you left in my room. It still smells like you, even though you have been gone for weeks, like wood smoke and rain and your favorite kind of coffee. Some nights I sit just inside my window, in the pool of light provided by the street lamp, and bury my face in it the way you once buried yours in my hair. Then, for a few moments, I can pretend you are still here, with me, and you always will be. But a girl can only lie to herself for so long. Because you are really gone, for forever and eternity.
I caught a tear on my thumb and leaned over the side of the porch. Far below me, waves crashed against the deserted beach. I blew gently on the tiny bead of water. It danced away from me, invisible against the pale blue sky until it met the waves.
I closed my eyes and whispered into the wind as if you could hear me. “I dropped a tear into the ocean. The day I find it is the day I stop missing you.”
