Milk

We were fresh and sweet and new,

And we loved how fresh and sweet and new we were

So we captured that essence and started to bottle it up.

Each drop of stupid laughter,

Every drip of our movie nights and endless texting chronicles at 1 am on schoolights,

And we squeezed out all of our

Bottomless, honest-to-goodness, selfless, innocent, giddy love for each other into a bottle,

And we just kept on storing up all of this too-good-to-be-true, delicious, wonderful love.

So much so, that it was our lifeline,

Our connection to not only each other, but

To love itself.

And so, this little bottle of our love slowly grew from a pint into a gallon of sweet, nourishing memories,

Silky smooth and comforting as a familiar, favorite childhood blanket,

And white,

Pure, innocent white,

As the first flake of snow on an infant’s nose.

But one day,

One fateful and confusing day,

You were carrying our gallon of all things good

And your hands were not careful and kind like you used to be,

They shook and flung the gallon with your every step

Until little drops of our happiness started to spring out,

And suddenly, splashes echoed inside the firm plastic we’d surrounded ourselves with,

To save ourselves from hatred,

To preserve all of our goodness with a cap on the top that promised that we would exist in this fresh happiness as long as we wished,

But you stopped wishing what I believed we were both still wishing,

Because you opened the gallon,

Ripped the cap off, as you usually did,

And you threw it across the earth

Exposing the rich, pure trust and memories to the darkness

And you spoiled us.

The sweet soured all too quickly,

The freshness,

The beautiful trust we shared staled.

And the second, the very second, you noticed

The brown spots,

And the wicked stench that followed you everywhere you went,

You looked around every place but behind you

to blame for the fall.

You threw your hatred and your disgust

And your fiery, yet uneducated words at me,

In the same fashion that you ripped off the cap:

Careless, desperate, unknowing of the consequences,

And so, I said nothing as you left and found another gallon to spill all of your hatred into.

And I sat in the corner coloring

Seven, thick, dark letters in permanent ink,

Onto a red sticker that matched the anger and blame in your eyes.

I stuck the greasy edges onto the gallon and left it there,

A tarnished, stinking mess,

Foamy with frustration,

Fuming the premises with soured trust and mishandling of fresh feelings,

Colored with brown spots,

Spots darkening and dividing

As each of our beliefs went in separate directions

Time passed on as it usually does

With changing leaves, the lengthening of hair,

And cider mill donut-induced weight gain,

And in the addition of new gallons of milk passing through the grocery store

I had been pouring my shared happiness with another into a new, Stronger gallon for about two years now,

Still sweet, still nurturing, still refreshing

And I heard that you traveled to that dark corner of the earth

Where all those soured, retired gallons go,

Searching for the one with the Sharpie heart we drew on its side

Because we loved the idea of its permanence and uniqueness.

And you stumbled upon our specific mess of a time capsule

I heard you cried,

Adding another sour liquid into the mess

Of toxic, discolored, moldy residue we left behind.

And you picked it up,

Heavy as a rock,

Heavy as a responsibility in your hands

And then you felt it

The rigid, edge of the reminder I planted on the side of our old home.

Hope spilled into your heart

And your memories of the past clouded the stench,

Swearing that you smelled that old freshness again,

And then, with all of the naive-desire-stuffing in the basement of your heart,

churning like it once did,

You flipped the gallon on its side and you finally saw it

In a black that matched a firework of mold in the center of our mess,

The sticker screamed at you

E X P I R E D

You see,

We need milk

To build us up with strength in our bones

And love in our hearts

And it tastes so good,

Filled with sugary, palatable love and laughter

And 1 AM texts,

And when its guarded by a wall of thick, plastic trust,

All capped off with a promise to

Do whatever we had to do to keep our love as pure as the day we met,

We were almighty and necessary

And we never thought we’d go bad, but

No one ever does

No one really reads the expiration date

when they’ve got their milk safe in the fridge,

No one ever believes that what’s sweet

Could ever spoil.