forever love

I loved him once.
In the mirror, I didn’t see me — I saw him.
His reflection tangled with mine, dark threads weaving through my bones.
His eyes, his smile, the colour of our hair — all of it alive inside me, impossible to separate.

Across the schoolyard, my heart trembled like a moth trapped against glass, fragile, desperate.
His eyes held storms I could have drowned in willingly.
His lips promised shelter from every fear I had ever carried.
His hair, midnight silk, fell over the edges of him, almost angelic, almost untouchable.

He was my protector.
The one who walked me home through the hollow streets of night.
The one who gave me a home when my mother’s drunken hands struck with shadows that lingered long after her fist had gone.
I was a child in a body too raw to swim, reaching and grasping at a world I could not hope to fix.

We were fire.
We were reckless, volatile, consumed.
Our love bruised. Our love burned.
Tender and feral in the same heartbeat.
Every touch spoke the language my heart had been learning alone.
Every look pressed into me like a confession.
Every whisper was a map to a body and soul I had never known I could inhabit so fully.

And yet — I left.
I left him the weight of our emotions, the intensity, the physical fights.
I left even though I more than loved him, even though every part of me still wanted to stay.
I left, and I still do not know why.
The answer slips through my fingers like smoke — fear, survival, the impossibility of holding a love this fierce without losing myself.

I went with another man, reckless and blind, too young to carry the weight of what we had.

And still — I love him.
I have never loved like that since.
Not in words.
Not in touch.
Not in the trembling silence after everything falls away.