When speaking seriously on the topic of love as a young girl, a teen, one tends to lose creditability. There is a generalized and common idea that love that is young is not as laudable nor as beautiful as love that is old. It is said that young love burns like brushfire and old love like oak; a simple saying rendering old love forever superior--but what if that oak is rotted? What if the oak is old, decaying and wet and the brush is dry, brittle and clean? I've learned, at least in my experiences, that love is love no matter the age, the wisdom--or the distance. .
As there are in all great love stories there was a boy and a girl and I already being the latter let me instead tell you about the boy--and boy he was. Tsotne was his name. Beautiful. Bold. Brilliant. His hair was blonde, nay, it was white. White like snow, white like the icy moon that shines it's light through space into the whites of my eyes. His eyes brown. Muscles thick and sturdy like a thoroughbred. When he would play his violin, which he played exceptionally well, his light stubble would rub against the chin rest and he would smile and I would sway.
Our love was not a story of prolonged anguish and betrayal. It was not a harlequin romance, nor any shade of Grey. Our love affair was quick, beautiful, finite and everlasting. It had started when I was fifteen and Tsotne nineteen. I was walking on the outskirts of Yekaterinburg in the winter. Snow covered the streets like blankets of clouds. It topped the cars and buildings in little top hats of white and it squished under your boot when you walked as I was doing. Walking along a river that led into the city. Alone. Cold. Tired. Lost. Lost in my own city. Not lost as if my only way of survival was hunting deranged bear or self-cannibalization, but lost like I knew the way but I couldn't find it as if something wouldn't let me. As I came off the road on to the bank of this river I saw a boy in black, with a head of white playing perfectly a violin of brown.
