The First Love

She was determined to believe that her first love was something worth remembering, worth yearning. She kept the fire warm around her love, never let it cool down, and vanish into dust.
She blew sighs of desires towards the fire to keep it in flames.

She soaked her feet in lukewarm water, and coloured her nails with the colour of love, red and hot. She painted high and thin eyebrows on her forehead, and her fleshless lips she covered with carmine red, the same blush on her pale and dry cheeks, thin like paper, wrinkled by time.

Her pearly skull glittered underneath her thin hair. She belted her skinny waist, her skirt swirled around her as she danced in her ballerinas.

She sat and wrote the letter she had written before, every year, for many years. She believed that while she still remembered, her love wouldn’t forget her, and she wrote the words “I love you still”, the same words she whispered to herself every morning.

She put a stamp on the envelope, hid the letter in her cupboard, along with all the hundreds of letters never to be sent.