First love by Daria Voshchatymska

At sixteen - the age of foolishness

and wild emotion - I was hopelessly in love with someone I would never meet again. His traits still occasionally appear before my eyes, but no longer with love but with regret for my passionate shyness.

***

Won’t let go,

Never will.

If you’re wires —

I’m the still.

Don’t run fast,

Stay, don’t flee.

Kiss my back,

Don’t leave me.

If love’s rain,

I’m the sea.

You’re the clock —

Slipping free.

If you’re gone,

I’m not whole.

Just a shell,

Just a hole.

You don’t care,

I can see.

Needles sting

Over me.

You’re so far,

Not the same.

Where the sun

Knows no name.

***

One lonely winter, you started to write,

Sketching the fields, painting poles in the night.

I saw your beauty — I couldn’t look down,

In black and white ink, that’s where you were found.

I was a field — so empty, so high,

Far from warm people, lost in the sky.

You gave me warmth, though you never knew,

While I let go of the dreams I once drew.

Your every word lit sparks in the dark,

They sang to my soul like a melody’s spark.

Now that I see with a clearer mind,

I shouldn’t have let my heart grow blind.

You were a lesson, not meant to be mine —

Just something I cherished, like stars when they shine.

***

The stars had drawn their silver veil

Across the cradle of the skies,

And silence sang a lullaby

Where moonlight kissed our sighs.

Two souls, in quiet rapture caught,

Murmured soft beneath the trees —

Not words, but all the things they meant,

Like winds that stir the seas.

The stars burned bright, their voices hushed,

The lantern joined their glow.

Its light and theirs became as one,

So warm, so soft, so slow.

And moths, like fragile thoughts, took flight,

Then vanished into flame —

Brief sparks against the breath of night,

Too wild to ever tame.

I stood alone — no hand in mine,

No echo but the breeze,

Just shadows speaking soft of you

Through rustling of the trees.

Perhaps I loved you far too deep,

Too fierce, too fast, too free.

But stars remember how we dreamed,

And so, perhaps, do we.

For even now, when skies fall still,

And morning steals the dark,

I feel you in the hush of stars —

A fading, glowing spark.