I've never written about her

I've never written about her. TP. I hope that from wherever she is after her soul vacated, leaving her container barren and bald, that she smiles knowing that she does exist in my memory.
I don't know about her family, not much. I don't know if they speak of her while they sit out by the fire or during dinner. After 14 years of silent whispers, I write for all to see.

Who was she?
Well, she was my first. The first girl to really look at me. We were young, teenage love in boarding school. She was my senior, three years older and was my first hug when I was scared of being alone, away from home in another city.

She possessed a glow which hid a sorrow I had never seen. She was an amazing vocalist. The most beautiful singing in the school, they told me.

We connected in the most unusual ways. She'd lay in her bed, ill - "another attack" they said calmly. Not for me though, I was a panic-stricken chicken. I wanted to help, needed to help. She'd ask me to sing her a song from the 90s until her asthma attack calmed down. I'd hold her hand and smile with her as we played song games.

Its probably an insignificant love affair considering I was only 13, but its definitely worth remembering. The days in the dining hall where she would walk across the overcrowded hall to bring me an extra piece of chicken from her plate. Sunset watching from the balcony of the 'sickbay'. The times I'd be ill in my bed and she's the first to come make sure i was warm, and the last to leave even if she was risking detention.The little love words scribbled on a torn page from exercise book, and the perfume on valentine's day. She was my first kiss and realisation of what seemed at the time a curse. the simple pleasures at the smallest gestures of love.

It was a few months and a fewer days. Then a phone call - she was dead.

I've spoken about her in gasps, whispers, in the evening night secretly among only the closest people that i know would never dare utter my words to anyone.

Its 14years now and i finally realise that love is that innocence, that connection and that lesson she taught me before she finished dying and started living. For we are born to die, that means she's finally alive.

So my words today, to whomever will read, is a dedication to an unspoken hero, a lost love a teacher, my long lost best friend. A girl who hadn't become a woman - a lady of my past.

Dear T.P. 

Your memory is embedded in my being... for as long as i continue dying i will keep your memory alive.

 Love

Joan