Oceans Black Heart - Part 1

The Ocean’s Black Heart

Not long ago, I thought it would never end.  Every inch of Her engrained itself in my memory to keep as perfect as it had always been.  Not long ago...
It ended.  And I was left with my memories and my dreams... and a ring.  A ring I’d given Her for saying “Yes” to the question that terrified me to ask.  For saying yes to spending the rest of our lives together... before She decided to leave.
The ring itself was a simple thing, and not expensive as both She and I had been broke.... and honestly, She would not have been able to wear it because of her parents.  So instead I had hunted and found a very cheap, but adequately wonderful ring.  A sterling silver band with small stones in it that caught the light and reflected it, centered around a small black heart that protruded from the surface.  It was beautiful, it was elegant, and it suited Her tastes and self perfectly.
I kept it since, in a small, blue stone, jewelry case my grandmother had given me, along with a few of the most important things to me.  Such things included the cross necklace that She’d given me with my name and a heart written on a grain of rice and a tiny rose inside it.  Corny perhaps, but I cherish it still.  The ring always laid over it, next to the pocket knife my Great Grandmother had given me to keep, which she had received from her father in 1912 when they came to America.
Somehow, I could never bring myself to rid myself of the ring, though it haunted me every time I saw it.  I couldn’t wear it without wanting to cry or just feeling sick.  I couldn’t give it to someone else, knowing that they would have to know where it had come from and hadn’t been bought for them.  And I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out, because somehow that would mean throwing out the whole relationship that I’d had with Her.  I was stuck with it, for two years.
Finally, around July 2003, three years after my first kiss from Her, I decided I was ready to give it up, and perhaps I had even found a way how.  For a week before I left my home to travel and to release it, I wore it nearly every day, studying it... remembering.  At last, when I wanted to keep it the most, I knew I’d have the courage to rid myself of it.