Such is Life

Alina’s life journey began in the love of her parents who married in 2004. Alina was wonderfully formed in her mother’s womb before taking her first breath in 2006.    
   
By 2009, Alina was giving her parents great joy as she developed the use of language. Her mother cried when she first called to her mamma. As she began to walk and dance, her mother was happy because she too was a dancer.    
   
The year 2017 marked the transition of her body from girlhood to womanhood as she experienced the changes of puberty. Her shape and features seemed to change by the day. She placed her hands on her growing breasts and marveled at Mother Nature’s work.    
   
In 2019, she developed her first crush on a boy, and by 2021, she experienced the bittersweet taste of breaking several young men’s hearts. She was desired by many men.    
   
On a warm spring night in 2023, she found great joy in the arms of her first lover. It was as if all her life had unfolded for that precious night.    
   
There would be more nights and more love  shared. I was one of those lucky men who fell under her spell. I still treasure the moment my offerings sprinkled on the tender freckles across her breasts. Alina called them birthmarks and said they were gifts from her mother who loved how they mirrored night sky constellation of Orion. I remember thinking that the placement of each blemish must have been divinely determined eighteen years earlier in her mother’s womb.    
   
Our love was not meant to continue. Her time was cut short by a case of mistaken identity and a single Russian bullet in the spring of 2024. I held Alina’s sobbing mother in a vain attempt to comfort her. Finally, she raised her eyes and said with a trembling voice, “They shot my Alina at the center of Orion’s belt.”  
 
I felt dizzy and thought my knees might drop me to the floor. I had kissed Alina at that very place. I had loved every inch of Alina.  
Such is life, I thought.