THE FIRST GIRL I EVER LOVED

I knew I loved her before I let myself feel it.

The first girl I ever loved:

Spoke softly. She never knew how to make herself big in a small room. But she’d send me letters covered in hearts and stickers and glitter glue, and to me, she was brighter than the sun. She wore mismatched socks and kept her curly hair short. I wrote her a million poems, but only showed her a few. Her hands were small and fit so nicely in mine, and I loved how her clothes smelled like her room, like burnt incense and yellow roses. We liked all the same music, but really I just liked her, and that made me love everything she touched. 

I knew I loved her before I let myself feel it. Everything reminded me of her. She was my shooting star at 2:22 AM. Coincidences were penned in her name, as I swore the Universe had brought us together. She brought me and a tin of watercolors to her favorite beach down in Malibu. I let her paint my face and arms up and down. I closed my eyes and imagined that every blue brush stroke was her fingertip, coloring me with her affection. 

Knowing her made me want to read every book and paint my nails pink and write hundreds of love stories—all for her. It was not enough to hold her. I wanted, more than anything, to hear her every unspoken word and see the colors of her soul. I only hugged her to bring her heart closer to mine. I loved how she felt like my secret: nobody but us could see the way we looked at each other. And nobody else could feel the artifacts she carved in the corner of my mind. 

Sometimes she would lay her head on my shoulder in bed. Sometimes she would ask me to skinny dip at midnight. And sometimes she’d be driving me down a winding hill and the wind would make the music sound like it was a beating heart and I could barely see the road through my rose-colored glasses and she would tell me how she was in love with another girl. I cried in the bathroom in the name of she’ll never love me the way I love her. But love is not a light switch. I couldn’t let her go, just as she couldn’t let Mary go. I was there in front of her, naked and cold and beaming pink with love, and she couldn’t let Mary go. And I couldn’t let her go, either. 

We drank a whole bottle of wine on my bedroom carpet. I cleaned for hours before she arrived, setting each candle and match-box in their perfect places. She told me I was beautiful, and we kissed on my shower floor. And we kissed again on my bed. And in the morning, it was all over and friendly again, and I closed my eyes when she took off her top in front of me. I was so in love with her that it hurt to breathe. She had to leave early in the morning. Mary was taking her to San Francisco. She couldn’t hide her excitement, even though they were just friends in love, too. 

That summer I decided that she was one of the great loves of my life. It was not our time, but I swore to keep her close until it was. I believed with my whole heart that we would get married. These days I’m not so sure. I gave her a kiss on the cheek before she left for autumn in New York, and cried in my car to the thought of her goodbye. We met up a few times when the leaves rotted, and we’d talk about our own little journeys in our own big worlds and hug hello or goodbye at the train station. One of those nights, we kissed for so long that my red lipstick disappeared. I showed her a song the next morning, telling her that it reminded me of her. She smiled and said that that song always reminded her of Mary. It would always be their song. And Mary would always be her girl. She said that she and Mary knew they were in love, they just didn’t know what to do with it. 

Somehow it all feels so long ago now. I’m not sure which one of us stopped responding to the other’s letters, but, to be honest, it was probably me. It didn’t matter that she had my whole heart—I only had half of hers. I wasn’t strong enough to wait for her the way she needed me to. 

I last saw her in summer. Time had led me to somebody else’s lips, and I was gray with guilt from loving another the way I promised to love only her. Eventually I fell too deep to reach her, and our chapter weeped her final sentences. I told her “I love you” when we hugged goodbye. Like I always did. 

A part of me holds her hand in my mind. Her sweet, quiet laugh. Her freckled nose. Her green eyes. Her rose lips. Even if I wanted to, I could never let her go. We could kiss and I could pretend like there was never anything else. If only, if only, if only her heart was only mine.  

AUTHOR: Violetta Balkoff
ARTIST: Alaina Cherry is an illustrator in her junior year at Brown. She is probably somewhere sipping a chai latte right now.