When I Was Fourteen

This is the third part of something I'm writing. The rest is under "Something I'm writing". Go look at it if you like this :) Although this is the only part about love. So far. I apologise for it not being a poem.

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When I was fourteen I fell in love. At least, it felt like love at the time, now I look back and I realise it wasn't true love. I was young and insecure, it didn't take much for me to become obsessed with him. It felt like a storybook beginning. We met at a charity evening. He was helping, so was I. I looked up and saw him across the bar, staring at me. Our eyes met. He smiled his beautiful, easy smile, a smile that will always speak a million words to me. I turned to check that he wasn't looking at someone behind me. He must of thought I was avoiding his gaze because when I looked round again he had taken another platter of food and moved off, disappearing easily into the crowd of noisy middle-aged couples.

I saw him again later though. His limbs moved with a certain grace that only someone who is completely comfortable in his body can posses. The minute I saw him I became acutely aware of how disjointedly I moved. It's a feeling that never dulled while I was in his presence, but I came to love it, came to enjoy feeling every muscle in my body when I shifted. At least, I loved it when I was with him.

He walked past me and I felt his fingers brush mine. A note. I put down the platter of food I was carrying and hurried to a corner where I could read it.

Meet me somewhere quiet.

It read. And scrawled at the bottom was another sentence.

Your eyes speak to me.

He was watching me from across the room. I nodded my head to the door and walked toward it. The cool night air hit my face, but I wasn't cold. I looked down at my body, wishing it were thinner, better. I became aware of a warmth at my back; I turned around. He was taller than me, and he stood so close that I had to look up. My nose brushed his chin and we both shivered at each other's touch. He smiled again, and this time I smiled back.

The heat from his body was making me want to draw closer, and I couldn't stop staring at his lips, wondering what they felt like. I had never felt like this before. I had spent my teenage years so far wrapped up in a blanket of food and bathrooms and calories. I was looking so far into his eyes it hurt. He bent his head and placed his lips on mine. The kiss tingled through my body and made me feel alive. We paused only to look at each other again, and whisper our names in each other's ears. His lips lit a fire inside me.

The evening finished soon after that. I gave him my phone number and we parted, his fingers lingering on mine just that second longer, so that as I walked home I could still feel them on my palm.

It felt like the classic teenage boy-meets-girl story. Our friends teased us each separately but we didn't mind. And such teasing melted into background white noise the second we saw each other. Usually teasing really got to me, made me insecure and worried, but with him I was whole, and nothing else mattered.

Soon people grew tired of our burning romance, and of hearing about him from me. Whenever I wasn't with him I had to fold my love up and store it in a corner of my heart. But my chest felt about to burst with the love it was holding; no one ever told me how heavy and tiring it was to love.

When I was fourteen I fell in love. And when I was fourteen I had my heart torn into pieces and burnt with the very fire his lips had lit. I never told anyone why it ended. People asked and I just mumbled "it didn't work out".

I remember the last time I saw him. He walked away from me, leaving my hand dangling by his side, still feeling the imprint of his fingers on my palm. Later that hand took apart a plastic razor. Later that same hand, shaking, dragged that razor across my body until blood dripped everywhere, mixing with tears until I couldn't tell the difference. Later that hand cleaned the cuts and covered them with gauze. I swore never to love again.

When I was fourteen I fell in love. At least, it felt like love at the time. But soon the cut healed and became just another scar. Just another scar. I loved that scar once.

**

Comments will be appreciated and returned.