She was my first kiss. My first love. She was a little match
girl who could see the future in the flame of a candle. She
was a runaway who taught me more about life than anyone has
before or since. And when she was gone my innocence left
with her.
As I begin to write, a part of me feels as if I
am awakening something best left dead and buried, or at
least buried. We can bury the past, but it never really
dies. The experience of that winter has grown on my soul
like ivy climbing the outside of a home, growing until it
begins to tear and tug at the brick and mortar.
I pray I
can still get the story right. My memory, like my eyesight,
has waned with age. Still, there are things that become
clearer to me as I grow older. This much I know: too many
things were kept secret in those days. Things that never
should have been hidden. And things that should have.