My love for you was fireworks—a loud noise, a bright flash of light in the dark, a feeling of awe—and then nothing but a trace of smoke in the air.

It was insistent and distracting and so very brief, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Or any less burned into my retinas long after it has gone.

My love for you was a kaleidoscope of colors and feelings, one after another, nearly too quick to fully realize before fading to the next. I reveled in the intimacy of your attention, and I shivered in the shade of your withdrawal. Every day, I faced a myriad of thoughts and feelings, and as soon as one would pass another would come on its heels. I felt off-center, unbalanced beneath the spectacle of our connection.

My love for you was explosive. After enduring so little light for so long, the immediacy of you was all-consuming. It burned bright and hot, and it caught quickly. Oh, how I longed for and feared those feelings all at the same time! I was all flame, and you were the quick flash igniting and then disappearing altogether. You became the whisper of smoke in the air and the memory of something splendid but always uncertain.

My love for you burned bright, but I suspect that it will not burn long now, without care to support it. Soon the wind will blow it out, and you will be just another memory added to the rest. But know that I loved you—strongly and truly—even though I knew all along that you would never love me.

My love for you was fireworks…

In the wake of that love, my eyes are readjusting to the dark. I am relearning what it is to see the night sky without the expectation of you as a part of it. The horizon has opened up. You were ephemeral, fleeting. Now that the smoke has cleared, and the wind has blown it away, I can finally see the night sky.

It’s full of stars.

When I love again, I don’t want a love of fireworks. I want a love like the stars, beautiful and burning bright long after we’re both gone. Stars to sail our ships by. Stars that tell stories in their forms. Stars that shoot and fall but do not blind us to the night around us and all the other stars in the sky.

I want a love made up of stars.

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Author: Crystal Jackson

Editor: Yoli Ramazzina

Photo: Pixabay