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

one eventually running aground on the same quiet fact that part of me was never fully present.

A woman named Carol, whom I genuinely loved for four years, told me gently and correctly that she felt like she was competing with someone who wasn’t even in the room.

She wasn’t wrong.

I kept one photograph of Lily in the top drawer of my nightstand. The way continue reading …