SEX & METAPHYSICS

Your first love gets you raw and open and naive and strong. Your first love gets the secrets that you never even knew you were meant to keep buried away. Your first love teaches you that love isn’t about reckless kissing and hands all over the place, that it’s actually about learning and understanding and compromise and feeling so happy you might explode. Your first love takes you to the mountain tops and the stars there are more spectacular than any you’ve ever seen. Your first love sits with you until your head finds a home in the crevice between their neck and shoulder and you want to stay, more than anything, you want to stay. Your first love laughs at your jokes and suddenly you are the world’s greatest comedian, it doesn’t matter that no one ever found you funny before, it doesn’t matter than tomorrow you still have to face the world. Your first love is like a safe, where you hide the treasures most precious to you because you think they’ll be around forever. Your first love teaches you loneliness, teaches you about endings and goodbyes and emptiness. Your first love makes breaking an arm sound like a walk in the park. Your first love promises that they won’t forget and you believe them until you see them kissing someone else on the street that you used to meet. Your first love makes you bitter. And your second love makes that bitterness go away.

In three years time, you’re standing at the crossroads when you see her. She’s got a brown leather bag hanging off one shoulder, and a pearly white ribbon around her neck. Her head bobs along to a song you can’t hear and you find yourself wondering what she sings in the shower these days - what she listens to before falling asleep. She used to joke that singing wasn’t her forte, and that music wasn’t her strength; but you loved her Sunday morning humming; her smile in your mouth, your fingers in her dress. She opens her eyes a little wider and then smiles and gives you a wave. There isn’t much time for talking as you walk past each other and the green man begins to flash. You think her hair looks different, not the colour or the style, but the way it frames her face. She doesn’t look so girlish when she says ‘hey’ and offers you a grin. And when she walks past, you can’t help but turn and watch. You wonder who listens to her talk about the stars at night, or who carries her home when she’s drunk. Three years ago she told you that she loved you. Today you almost say it back.