I had a dream one night that I woke up next to the man I love. It was one of those dreams that are so real you have to wake up and rethink where you really are. In my lonely twin bed in a room shared by my sister who, at the time, was in Orlando with my mother. It was extra lonely. I looked at the clock and it read six o’clock am. Way to early to wake up, even though I heard my grandma doing who knows what in the kitchen. She likes making noise. Whether she’s loudly voiced, or in the dishes cabinet clanking plates, only to close the cabinet with no plate in her hand, she is just loud. Back to my thoughts. I desperately tried to rethink my dream since it was slowly fading from memory. I grabbed the notepad I kept in the top drawer of my nightstand and scribbled down what I could recall, which wasn’t much. I was waking up elsewhere, beside my boyfriend, Nile.
Things were so clear to me. Clearer than my young brain could ever imagine clarifying. Here I was, 4 hours away from a life that was full of drama, full of bullshit and horrible people. I was in a new place with a chance to start over and be with family and be happy…but couldn’t bring myself to crack a smile, let alone stop crying myself to sleep some nights. I love him. Even if for some reason we were to break up, it was a relationship I will probably remember to my death. Perfection in attraction brought on by differences where it doesn’t count- to keep the relationship from being boring, and similarities where it does count- to keep us with things in common. We were so much alike it was scary at times.
I laid in bed and reflected about us. There were times we would read each other’s minds. There were other times where we would be so in touch with one another’s feelings. We could look at each other and know exactly what we were feeling. I hugged my pillow close and wished, with every fiber of my being, that it was him. I realized that I shouldn’t be here. I realized that I should be waking up next to him.


The other day, a man sat down next to me at the boardwalk to ask me for a cigarette. I handed him the cigarette and we began to talk. He was flirtatious, to say the least. I wasn’t rude to him. I wasn’t overly nice either. I answered him but showed no interest in him. The old me would have flirted back, but the new me couldn’t shake the want of that flirty white boy to be my Nile. I don’t date inside my race, it’s like incest.
So I kindly told him off. I told him, “If you are romantically interested in me, you are wasting your time, I have a man.” I was called a bitch. Maybe it was the tone of my voice. Maybe he couldn’t make out what I was saying because I wasn’t speaking hick. I just rejected him and was instantly titled a bitch in the world that he mindlessly wanders. I was upset. I was no less then pissed. I insulted him, in the first way that comes to mind, I should insult his pant size.
“I’m sorry, I don’t date pencil dicks.” By the time I said this, he was getting up and leaving. As he walked away he walked backwards while giving me the middle finger. I did the first thing I could think of, I jacked off my pinkie finger at him. I realized he was right, I am a bitch. With this thought, I grinned, and finished my cigarette.