The last time I saw my first love was on my 17th birthday—thirty years later, a woman who looked exactly like her stepped into my yard

of us everything it had to give.

“It just took me thirty years,” I whispered to the view.

The river kept moving the way rivers do — indifferent, endless — and the afternoon light came down through the pines and rested on the water like something left there on purpose.

I stayed until the sun got low.

Then I walked back down the hill.