There was only ever one.
The others were echoes, shadows, people I tried to make into someone else.

You.

I think of our walks through Kinnear Park, the way the trees held our secrets while the city drifted around us, unaware.
Curious George underwear, encounters at Ozzies, and potato soup with dill weed…

After we parted, I tried to find you over the years.
But you were always just out of reach—like a word I couldn’t quite remember, or a dream I woke from too soon.

In the meantime, life kept moving. I lived in Mexico, then Guatemala for two years. I stood in the heatt of Belize. I returned to Mexico in the summer of 2016, a little older, a little quieter.
But I never stopped carrying you with me.

Your name still lives in my heart, like a house I never stopped coming back to—even after the door closed.

We let go.
And I’ve never stopped wondering what would’ve happened if we hadn’t.

I never stopped loving you.
Not once.
Not even in the quiet years.

If I could go back, I’d hold on harder.
I’d stay.
We’d stay.

And maybe that’s the thing—
I still would.