I loved you when I was twenty-one and still when thirty-one rolled around. The years pass without you. People come and go. Some I remember well. Others I can’t even recall their names. Now I’m over forty and still in love with a man I can’t have. H.E.

The pain started years ago,
but I’d lived with it for so long
at that point that I’d accepted it
as an inevitable part of me.
From “Leaping”
by Ashley D. Wallis