First Love

The first time we talked, it was sunshine. Sunshine which flowed between us and connected us. Sunshine which only grew, minute by minute, hour by hour.

It was like the world was two shades brighter and the colours more vivid and suddenly nothing was the same without it. It was like a drug; suddenly you understand why people can get addicted to this feeling, the feeling of being more alive than ever before.

I met him in the hot sun, with water splashed on our faces and peaches jammed in our mouths. Not forgetting the cherry stained smiles with the full moon reflecting in our eyes.

Never before had I felt quite as seen, quite as understood, as when I was sat across a table in the dead of night, revealing my soul to the moons and the stars and the boy sat before me.

We began to write notes and poetry, we believed that our souls were connected as one within this chaotic mess of a world. How could they not be, when the strings connecting us are so unpredictable? How could they not be, when we were connected so instantaneously?

I travelled across the continent, not once but twice. I traveled across the world to a different continent. Christmas was in the air and my heart was full in my chest and nothing else but him mattered. The feeling of being there, the rush of being with him, was incomparable to everything I'd felt before.

But our connection had a shelf life that I was blind to. Intentional ignorance, closing my eyes when I witnessed him turn away. Into the arms of another girl, into his other lives, into a place far away from me. I heard him tell me that there was no such thing as soulmates, I heard him tell me that he no longer thought what we had was special. The same sweet boy who cried and proclaimed the poetry of centuries past, who swore he would love me until the stars burnt out. I watched it crumble, I watched it blow away in the breeze.

I crumbled away into the breeze.

Slowly, I picked up the pieces. Slowly, things got brighter again. My eyes became accustomed to the dimness, but then it wasn't dim anymore.

I filled the cracks that were still present with love for myself, and hope for the things to come. Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing cracks with gold. It kept me going that I needed to be better.

The hot sun, the sticky hands covered in cherries, the tears beneath the Parisian sky. Broken memories held together with gold within my heart.