I didn’t go hunting for love. If anything, I had learned to leave it alone. But love has never been particularly interested in my plans.

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It arrived quietly, disguised as something harmless. A hello. A familiarity I couldn’t explain. Then I opened the door, and somewhere between tenderness and poor judgment, it made itself at home.

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I loved. I imagined. God, I imagined. I made orchards out of almosts and called them ours.

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Eventually, reality came knocking.

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The dreams cracked. The story unravelled. And I learned the peculiar grief of losing something that was both deeply real and never entirely mine.

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I thought the ending would destroy me. It didn’t.

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It left a stain. A little tenderness. A few truths I would rather have learned more gently.

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And somehow, my own hands returned to me.

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But to tell you how they did, I have to begin with the first time I reached for him.