She enters the frame like a prophecy that forgot how to whisper. Every room changes temperature when she arrives. Every camera, every man, every god leans forward.
Focus.
There it is again—the shimmer that hides between seconds. You can see a future inside her, not yours, not hers, but something shared, a flicker of what the world might look like if it ever forgave itself.
Suspense. Suspense. Click.
The flash breaks the moment into fragments. Her face blooms in the afterimage—too alive for the stillness it’s trapped in. And then something happens: the light doesn’t bounce back. It stays. For the first time, I feel the lens turning. The air behind me thickens; the hum shifts pitch.
Another flash.
The set disappears. Now I’m inside the frame—caught in her reflection, held in the same illusion I thought I was creating. She is calm, infinite, almost bored, while I stand there, exposed, a man of glass believing he was the mirror.
I understand it then: beauty doesn’t pose—it observes. It studies the eyes that try to own it. Every woman I photographed was really the camera, and I was the subject being developed in the darkroom of her gaze.
Focus. Don’t blink.
She leans forward slightly; the light folds around her like a question. I feel the shutter close over me. Silence.
When the photo develops, she’s radiant—and somewhere, faint but visible. I’m there too: a ghost in the reflection, the admirer finally seen by what he could never possess.
This morning’s not about the moose trotting through Main Street or Ruth-Anne’s weather report. This morning’s about something quieter. Heavier. More sacred.
This morning’s about my dad.
He was a doctor. Not the kind you see in movies, with perfect answers and heroic music swelling in the background. No, my dad was the kind who stitched you up with fingers that shook slightly from exhaustion, the kind who worked long shifts and sometimes came home with the weight of other people’s pain still clinging to him like a second coat. The kind who carried more than he ever let on.
He made mistakes. Lord knows he did. Dads aren’t gods, and sometimes they don’t know how to say sorry. But he was there. Not always in the way I wanted, but in the way I needed. Solid. Present. And when the chips were down, when the world came crashing in, he never turned his back on me. Ever.
He was my biggest fan, even when I was fumbling my way through life like a blindfolded man in a glass shop. He never laughed at my dreams—even the crazy ones like coming up to Alaska and whispering poetry through a mic to a bunch of insomniacs and ice fishermen. He didn’t always understand it. But he never stopped believing in me.
And now he’s gone.
And I’d give just about anything for one more cup of coffee with him. One more walk around the block. One more quiet moment where I could say, “Hey, Dad. I know now. I understand. Thank you.”
But there’s no rewind button. No encore performance.
All I’ve got now are echoes.
The way I clear my throat before I speak—that was his. The way I place my hand on someone’s shoulder when they’re going through it—that was his too. His presence shows up in the most unexpected ways, like a scent on the wind, or the sound of a song I didn’t know I needed until I heard it.
And maybe that’s the secret. Maybe the people we lose never really leave us. Maybe they just become part of the air we breathe. Part of the way we live.
So if you’re listening this morning, and you miss your dad too… I’m with you.
And I think they’re with us.
In the quiet strength we carry. In the love we give. In the lives we build from the scaffolding they left behind.
This is Chris in the Morning, son of a flawed and beautiful man who did his best—and loved me the best way he knew how.
The room is thick with something you can’t name. A lazy ceiling fan moves in slow, uneven circles, stirring the warmth but not cooling it. The scent of something foreign lingers—spiced, unfamiliar, maybe perfume, maybe smoke, maybe both. A record spins somewhere in the background, crackling like it’s been played too many times but still hasn’t lost its charm. And then there’s her.
She sits across from you, draped, loose-limbed, unconcerned. A leg crossed over the other, her heel tapping against the air to the rhythm of a song neither of you are really listening to. Her glass of whiskey is half-empty. Yours is untouched. It’s always like this. The dance before the fall.
TEMPTATION (smiling slow, head tilted, watching you through heavy lids, fingers lazily trailing the edge of her glass)
“You’re always so tense when you look at me. Makes me wonder what you’re thinking.”
YOU (exhaling, shifting in your seat, studying the way she moves, the way she doesn’t have to try—she just exists and the room bends around her)
“I’m thinking about leaving.”
TEMPTATION (laughs, low and effortless, like smoke curling in the air, like she already knows the ending to this story)
“You always think about leaving. And yet.”
YOU (eyes flicker to the door, then back to her, pulse slow but deep, the rhythm off just enough to be dangerous)
“And yet.”
TEMPTATION (leans forward, elbows on the table, her skin catching the light, a glint of something gold at her wrist, maybe a bracelet, maybe a handcuff, maybe something else entirely)
“Tell me, why do you come back if all you want is to walk away?”
YOU (rolling the unspoken answer across your tongue like a cigarette unlit, something dangerous, something waiting to burn)
“Maybe I just like testing myself.”
TEMPTATION (smiles like she’s heard it before, like she’s tasted every version of that excuse and found them all sweet, but not quite satisfying)
“Oh, honey. That’s not it.”
YOU (inhales slow, watching her watching you, waiting for her to tell you what she already knows, because she always does, and you always let her.)
TEMPTATION (leans back, stretching like a cat that’s full but still wants to hunt, voice lazy, like a song dripping through the speakers at half-speed.)
“You come back because you like the way it feels. The chase. The almost. The maybe. You like the way I make you forget that you were ever sure about anything.”
YOU (clenching your jaw, but not hard enough to crack, just enough to feel it, just enough to know that she’s right.)
“And what if I want to remember?”
TEMPTATION (a pause, then a smirk, then a slow, slow shake of her head.)
“That’s cute.”
YOU (laughs under your breath, shaking your head too, but for different reasons.)
“You think I’ll give in first.”
TEMPTATION (shrugs, one shoulder slipping bare, but she doesn’t fix it, doesn’t care, doesn’t need to.)
“I don’t think, baby. I know.”
YOU (reaches for the whiskey, finally, because your hands need something to do, because her eyes are waiting, because she’s already made her move, and now it’s yours.)
“What if this time, you’re wrong?”
TEMPTATION (leans forward again, elbows back on the table, hands folded, her chin resting lightly on them, lazy, knowing, devastating.)
“Then I guess we’ll both have a new story to tell.”
The fan hums. The record crackles. The whiskey burns. She is still watching, and you are still here.
It was one of those dreams where everything is softer, slower, like watching the world through a sheet of old glass. I was standing on a street that felt like somewhere I’d been before—a town that might have been mine, or maybe hers. The sky was a hushed shade of violet, the kind that happens just before a storm, when the world holds its breath.
And then Megan was there.
She wasn’t far, just at the edge of the sidewalk, half in the light, half in the shadows, her hair lifted slightly by a breeze that wasn’t real. She had that look—the one she used to give me when we were almost something. A tilt of the head, a trace of a smile, something unreadable in her eyes. I wanted to call out to her, but my voice caught in my throat, as if the dream itself had decided that words weren’t allowed.
She walked toward me, slow and deliberate, as if she knew the rules better than I did.
“You still dream about me?” she asked, though her lips never moved.
Not a single moment, not a single night, but all of it. The brush of her fingers once, in a crowded room. The way her laughter always seemed to linger in the air a little longer than anyone else’s. The almosts. The nearlys. The things that never happened but could have, should have.
I nodded.
And then, just like that, she was gone.
No fanfare, no goodbyes. Just the empty street, the hush of violet light, the feeling of something unfinished curling around the edges of the dream.
I woke up reaching for her name, but it slipped away like a wisp of smoke, vanishing before I could catch it.
There is a peculiar torment in yearning for something that feels both inevitable and unreachable. The thought of meeting her—a girl who might ignite the dim corners of my soul—feels like a specter haunting the edges of my existence. I do not doubt that she exists, but the space between us is vast, not measured in miles but in something far more cruel: the separation of worlds, of hearts untethered and drifting in opposite tides.
The Ache of Anticipation
Love, in its essence, is an act of discovery, but this discovery feels cloaked in mist. The prospect of her arrival is not a promise but a question, an unfulfilled prophecy etched into the fragile fabric of my desires. I imagine her face, not in its details but in its weight—an imagined gravity that draws my thoughts and leaves me breathless. And yet, she is not here. She is nowhere, and this absence is an echo that grows louder with every passing day.
It is not just the waiting that wounds me, but the distance I feel from myself in the waiting. How can I prepare to meet her, to give her the best of me, when the best of me feels obscured by the fog of solitude? This is the gothic paradox of love: to long for someone you cannot see, to prepare for a union that feels as distant as the stars, and to ache for a connection that exists only in the aching.
The Chasm of Doubt
The separation is not merely physical; it is existential. It is the nagging question that seeps into my quietest moments: “What if I am not enough?” The shadow of inadequacy looms over my every thought, whispering that the gap between us is not just circumstance but a reflection of my own insufficiencies. She is a vision, radiant and whole, while I feel fractured, a collection of pieces that struggle to form a coherent self.
And what if she never arrives? This is the chasm that terrifies me most—not the longing, but the possibility of its permanence. To yearn for her is agony, but to let go of the yearning feels like surrendering the last vestiges of hope. It is a cruel choice: to cling to the pain of anticipation or to face the void of its absence.
The Defiance of Hope
Yet, even in this torment, there is defiance. The very act of longing is a rebellion against the emptiness, a declaration that I believe in something more. The separation, as vast and suffocating as it feels, is also a testament to my capacity to dream, to imagine a connection so profound that it transcends the boundaries of my present.
I do not know her name, her voice, or the way her laughter might sound, but I know the shape of what she might mean to me. She is the possibility of light in a world that often feels cloaked in shadow. She is the promise that the ache of separation is not eternal, that the hollow chasm can one day be bridged.
The Dance of Longing
To yearn for love is to dance with ghosts, to reach for a hand that may never meet yours. It is an act of faith, of defiance, and of profound vulnerability. The feeling of separation is a wound that bleeds endlessly, but it is also a wound that reminds me I am alive. For in the longing, in the aching, there is life—a life that refuses to settle for anything less than the transformative power of love.
And so, I wait. I ache. I dream. Not because I am certain she will come, but because the act of believing in her is an act of believing in myself. Even in the separation, there is a kind of union—a union of hope, pain, and the unyielding desire to be known and to know. In this, I find a strange solace, a beauty in the longing that refuses to fade.
