It’s been almost ten years, but this is one of those stories time can’t fade and will live with me forever. I have loved other people since then, but if I ever owe it to someone to have taught me love, as well as pain – it is him.

We were kids, but we were real. I had a pure heart, and to my surprise, so did he. I looked into his eyes, and since the first seconds, I knew I was doomed. Not because of the color or the shape of his eyes, but because of how he looked at me. The first look, and then that smile. And if I know what love is, it’s because of those 30 first seconds. He looked at me like I was God-sent; like I was something extraordinary; he looked at me in a way that I had never dreamt of being looked at.

In the times that followed we made many mistakes. We said things; We did things that hurt us both. But no matter what, he always looked at me like I was a gift from heaven.

His hands brushed my wet hair in a first-floor apartment, where we used to hide from the world. His hands cooked my favorite pasta in a tiny kitchen with only two plates. His hands turned the wheel of a car that ran on 5 Euro fuel and froze every morning during that winter. His hands held my body on that cold September night, while he taught me how to make love for the first time. His hands touched my face and wiped my tears, but above all, his hands held my heart.

He loved me! He loved me! He loved me!

Not the idea of me. Not a beautiful side of me. Not just some version of me. But me! The naked me. The empty me. The impatient me. The insecure me. The “furious” me. He loved me.
And because he loved me, like no one has ever loved me, he was the first one to ruin me.

And of course, I loved him! You don’t give the power to destroy you, to someone you don’t love. So later, whenever I walked “our streets”, or listened to “our songs”, or sat in “our coffeeshops”; whenever I did alone what we used to do together, I got broken all over again, every single time.

Many years have passed since that September night, but I can relive it anytime I close my eyes. I see him – shy and curious. I see me – pretending to know what I was doing. And I see the unopened bottle of wine on the nightstand. It was there because that’s what they did in movies right? Drank wine! But we were just two fool kids, who fell in a deeper love that they could manage. Who loved too much, too soon, and got burnt. Who maybe, met at the wrong time, the wrong place. But God knows how right we were.

He knows the version of me that doesn’t exist anymore for the eyes of the world. A version that somehow comes to life only when he looks at me. And despite the years, it’s still there.

“You’re not my type anymore” – I told him when we sat for a coffee, after many Septembers. He looked at me, with his brown shining eyes, like he always did. Like a kid in front of a chocolate cake after he begged his mom all week for it, and now he got it. A look that was always the same: before he had me, while he had me, and after we parted. I didn’t say after he lost me, because somehow he never did. Even now, after almost ten years, whenever I feel like I want to go to my safe place, I close my eyes and think of his look.

I didn’t have much back then. I had nothing of what I earned later in life but I had him. I had his hugs, his kisses, his love and I had a home for my heart. He was my first love, my first heartache, my first in everything.

He had nothing special, except a cut on his eyebrow, and a part of dark shiny eyes. He didn’t have much in life – but he had me. In ways that no one has been able to have me later on. Whenever I cried later, my girls would say “Oh come on, you got over him.” And it was true. After him, I cried my heart out. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t breathe without him – and even when I managed to sleep, I dreamt of him. I stopped reading, I deleted my playlists because everything reminded me of him. And I swore to never allow myself to get this broken again.

But I also didn’t want to forget him. He used to call me “The wolf“.
He always told me “You’re a wolf because just like them, you’ll eat me alive if I hurt you, whether I apologize for it or I try to fight you”.

And that night we laughed our hearts out. It was our last night together. But one year later, as I was walking back home from work, I entered a tattoo studio. Partly because it was his birthday, and partly because I missed my old self so much. As the needle pressed into my skin, I closed my eyes and thought of all “the firsts” I did with him. Our first kiss, our first drive in the rain, our first night together, our first fight, our first reunion. He was once again my first – my first tattoo. And this time, he was here to stay. Time couldn’t fade this memory. No one could erase this from me; no one could take him away.

It’s been too long since I have had this tattoo on my back and whoever asked me about it, might have heard different explanations. But I never truly told them why “The wolf” and the half moon. And truth be told, it is not because my first love called me that. No! It’s because he loved me so deeply, so fully, so profoundly, that I don’t ever want to forget how I have been loved. How I, was worthy of a love so deep that has resisted all these years. And he lives in me forever, because he saw me in all of my phases and loved me regardless.

So while I am a wolf, he is the moon I will always howl for.

And on my back is only a half moon, because when we parted, I parted with many parts of me, that only come back in place when he looks at me. For whatever it’s worth, I will always love him. In one way or another, he will always have me.

In these ten years(almost), I have loved again. I have been broken again, I have been loved again, but deep down – somewhere in a deep corner of my heart – he has remained silent. He is there to remind me how good it feels to be loved unconditionally. And we both have each other’s back. We built a Lego house back then, where we both ran when we wanted the world to weigh a little less on our shoulders.

We parted because the world is too small for pure love like ours, but despite everything, I will forever be a wolf… I will always be his wolf…

©fiordalipi