Dear First Love
Today’s post is based on a writing prompt I shared in a previous Daily Drafts & Dialogues post. Keep reading to see what I wrote, and to access more writing prompts.
What I wrote below is based on the following writing prompt: Write a letter to your first love. Or write a fictional letter from the perspective of someone who is writing a letter to their first love.
Dear First Love,
It’s so cliché, but oh so painfully true, how sorry I am that I didn’t know then what I know now. If I had, I would have set you free much sooner than I did. And for that, I have regrets.
There’s so much regret that comes with all the sweet nothings I never said to you. Even if I wasn’t the one who was supposed to say them and didn’t, you still deserved to hear them. And by now, I hope you have, but that they’re true.
I never knew how to express what I felt for you in a way that was as passionate as it was earnest and as deep as it was shallow. Because I was never able to explore the shallow waters of adolescent life with you, as the depths I held weren’t for anyone else but me and all my history and dreams of what and who I was supposed to be becoming, along with everything else there was left to reach for... But that doesn’t mean I wouldn't have swum across the ocean to get to you, if only you had asked, just once, before the tides moved again. Like I did time and time again.
Your youth was wasted on my old soul, and our love on the fickleness of time, an alignment which we were never doomed to get right, always passing each other’s shores in the middle of the night. Back when there was always the promise of more unused tomorrows, until there were none. Back when we were still learning that affection was never truly free when it wasn’t given and received unconditionally. Because once certain things are given away, they can't be returned. But therein lies their ephemeral value. Like the caresses of skin and words that moved and fluctuated on your tongue, volleying for space, unraveling everything they touched, until they were lost forever in the romantic ether of the half-truths and reconjured memorial-like stories of forever. Forever no longer between us.
I know now that lost loves are lost for a reason, and that the reason is nothing more than the passage of time, and reason. Or, yet another cliché, due to the seasons of life, always brimming with growth and change, even when certain things remain the same.
Oh, how promises can be made from the heart without ever materializing and still be true when they are uttered, or not. And oh, how I regret that you regret I hadn’t made more of those imaginary promises for you to hear. Even if for a while, they would have seemed real enough to taste again, and strong enough to move mountains. Even if for a while they were fragile enough to disappear and fade without warning, to the place where they belong, in the forever no longer between us.
C'est la vie mon amour, plus maintenant.
I might revise, edit, or add to this draft in the future. Stay tuned.
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© All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC. The above work is a piece of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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Today’s Writing Prompt
Writing Prompt: The Critic
Write a scene in which a critic plays a big role in influencing the main character's thoughts or actions.
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