His lips tasted like freedom.  With one peck, I was gone.  Gone from this hellish existence we call life.  I was no longer afraid, no longer ignored, no longer alone. 
      His lips tasted like happiness.  The tingling, humming buzz of a night under the stars.  And I could help but smile each and every time we pulled apart only wanting to go back for another.  But really…
      His lips tasted like vanilla chapstick.  And when he put on a but too much, the smell lingered on my lips for hours, reminding me that I always had at least one person that I could call mine. 
      I told him that, that the smell of his chapstick always told me that I had him.  And to that he didn't say anything… He just kissed me again, because with every kiss brought more vanilla scent and another reminder that he would not leave. 
     I knew something is wrong when his lips started to taste like nothing.  Just like two, weird pink scraps of skin slapped and stuck at the mouth.  But he said that he was okay… and who was I to say that he wasn’t.
    My biggest mistake was listening.  That last night together… His lips, they tasted the way I never thought they would… Like deceit.  Like everything he’d ever said had always been a lie and I was the only who had been dumb enough to believe it.  That’s when I asked him what was really going on, and why his lips were telling me that he was leaving.
     “You’re lips don’t tell you anything, that’s not what lips do okay?” 
     “They used to tell me that you loved me, and I you knew that.  You used to think that it was cute, that it one of our special things-”
     “About that, I’ve been thinking…”
     There was the feeling of my insides crashing, tumbling into one another with my heart leading the way.  And before I knew it, he was gone and I was afraid, ignored. 
     The days that followed were miserable, the months that followed were long and dull, and in the year that followed… I learned to be my own companion, one that would always keep their promise.
     One day though, I found someone else and man did his lips taste like liberation.  They were the feeling of completely leaving the shackles behind and discovering a treasure buried so far under that if you weren't completely open to possibilities, you wouldn't have found it.
      His lips, they tasted like pure joy and the sensation of a smile never once leaving your face.
      And God damn, his lips didn't taste one bit like vanilla chapstick and it turns out that I didn't need that scent as a reminder, because his lips never once began to taste like nothing.