I was only 13. What did I know about love yet? All I knew was that I loved my side swept bangs and black nail polish. I was still figuring myself out. Who was I to think that what made me myself, was you? You were this perfect in my eyes being, someone who I could trust and someone who looked at me with no judgement. You knew who I was when I didn't even know myself yet. You opened me up to love when I believed that my heart would go to waste, when I believed that I would never have someone to pour my soul into and be soul mates with in this life the Lord has blessed us with. At 13, I thought God had forgotten about me. But with a smile like yours, with the kind heart that you possess, how could I ever doubt that mankind was created in the image of the Almighty? 7 years later and I still get flustered when you smile at me. At almost 20 years old I still want nothing more than to see you prosper in life and to be genuinely happy, even if that version of your life does not include me. I loved you so much that I showed you my art because you live in my ink and in my journals. I loved you so much I made you immortal so that those who live long after we’ve been turned to dust can know what you were to me. I’m glad that you are, because the world is a dark place when you aren’t around. Most people look back on their middle school romances with regret, I look at you with smiles, butterflies, and rainbows, and now that I think about, regret too. Regret that we slipt through the cracks. Regret that I have never been what you needed but you were everything I ever would. You were technical and mechanical, and I was and have always been artistic and that seemed to scare you that i was more carefree and threw caution to the wind with my affection. We were two puzzle pieces that fit together but didn’t quite get the picture right. And time tore us apart and our picture was left in the rain to crumble and we were drifting away into an abyss of high school drama and popularity divided us further but I still hoped that someday we would make the most beautiful picture. For someone so technical you made the most magnificent masterpiece when you smiled at me. You made me wonder if 2 plus pink would ever mean anything other than the nonsense you sparked up inside my mind when I caught you looking at me in class freshman year. I use ink when I write because I want every thought to exist forever in it, you write in graphite to fix your mistakes and I guess that's how you were able to erase me from your heart and you live on in the corner of my mind. I was your mistake but you, you were intentional. You were something worth keeping inside my journals just for myself but I was a mistake you could no longer bear inside your binder for the world to see. I remember the night you told me you loved me. We were two 13 year olds with life right in front of them, and you wanted me in yours. Standing in the middle of Camp Snoopy we quiety proclaimed our love, and that moment will always be ours. Although we were short lived, you live ever on within my heart and I run to your memory for comfort when life tries to claim my joy, When anxiety tells me that I am unlovable, I remember the first boy who saw me for the masterpiece I was when I could not even see it in myself, and the boy who was a puzzle I wanted to spend the rest of life solving. When we fizzled out I put my feelings for you in a box in my closet for the day you might decide “Maybe when we’re older” has come. If ever you decide that I am what you need, what you want, I’ll be here. Mind you I am not a safety net, but someone who wishes you nothing but the absolute best, hoping that maybe that includes me. First Love, you opened me up to a whole new world where love exists and people are kind. The 13 year old in me has always been waiting for you. The 20 year old that I am hopes we always remain at least friends.