We met by moonlight and sat on the swings talking all evening. We never even kissed, it was so innocent. We were kids. I was twelve years old.
He would leave me letters in a box buried under a large stone in the flower beds. The smell of lavender still takes me back to those months of happiness. We would write of our hopes and dreams, funny incidents occurring at our respective schools- all those things we would otherwise talk about on our swings.
I would write on lavender paper, sprayed with rosewater. He on white watermarked writing paper. I kept my bounty of paper, tied with red ribbon, under my pillow by night and under the floorboards by day.
Until the day my mother found us together sat holding hands on our swings for what would be the last time and dragged me kicking and screaming back to the house to cleanse me of him.
She wouldn’t listen to my pleas. He was sixteen and she wouldn’t believe in our innocence, claiming he was after our money.
The tears burned my face as his words blackened and crumbled to ash. My hands felt dead, like someone else’s, as they fed each leaf to the flames against their own will.
I could barely see as she forced us to say goodbye and packed me off to boarding school. My rosy worldview shattered for the first and last time. I soon became hardened, having taken the first step through my metamorphosis.
He would leave me letters in a box buried under a large stone in the flower beds. The smell of lavender still takes me back to those months of happiness. We would write of our hopes and dreams, funny incidents occurring at our respective schools- all those things we would otherwise talk about on our swings.
I would write on lavender paper, sprayed with rosewater. He on white watermarked writing paper. I kept my bounty of paper, tied with red ribbon, under my pillow by night and under the floorboards by day.
Until the day my mother found us together sat holding hands on our swings for what would be the last time and dragged me kicking and screaming back to the house to cleanse me of him.
She wouldn’t listen to my pleas. He was sixteen and she wouldn’t believe in our innocence, claiming he was after our money.
The tears burned my face as his words blackened and crumbled to ash. My hands felt dead, like someone else’s, as they fed each leaf to the flames against their own will.
I could barely see as she forced us to say goodbye and packed me off to boarding school. My rosy worldview shattered for the first and last time. I soon became hardened, having taken the first step through my metamorphosis.
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