We’ve covered a lot of ground together lately. Old roads. Deep cuts. Family and failure. Ghosts of love. The long way to becoming a man.
It’s strange, isn’t it? How you can live a thousand lifetimes inside one life—and still feel like there’s more you meant to say. People you meant to hold a little longer. A version of yourself you were trying to meet halfway across the years.
And maybe that’s just it.
Maybe we don’t end up where we thought we would. Maybe we don’t get the house full of children, or the girl back, or the big break. Maybe the world knocks us sideways, takes a few dreams out behind the barn, and leaves us with scars we didn’t ask for.
But we lived.
And we loved.
And that counts.
I’ve been the lost brother, the misunderstood son, the man who ran from love and the one who stayed too long in the wrong places. I’ve been alone. I’ve been held. I’ve been someone I couldn’t trust, and now… somehow… I’m someone I can.
And through it all—through psych wards and porch lights, through cold rivers and warm memories—what remains?
Love.
The steady, quiet kind. The kind that doesn’t demand anything from you. The kind that just says, “Come in. You’re home now.”
So to my family—thank you for carrying me when I couldn’t walk. To the woman I lost—thank you for teaching me how to feel. To my baby sister—keep shining, kid. To my brother across the sea—your strength doesn’t go unnoticed. To the sister I’m still waiting on—your place is here when you’re ready. And to myself… yeah, you made it, man. I’m proud of you.
This is Chris in the Morning, KBHR 570 AM, signing off—for now.
Wherever you are… whoever you are… be gentle with your ghosts. Speak kind to your reflection. And remember:
The world may not always hold you like you hoped… but love will.
There’s a kind of silence that doesn’t come from the wind or the snow—it comes from the space someone used to fill. From the sound of their laugh that hasn’t touched your ears in years, but still rings like it was yesterday.
Today… this one’s for her.
She was a girl from a small town. Nothing flashy. Just real. The kind of girl who knew how to slow down time with a look. Who didn’t need to chase the world—because she was the world to the people lucky enough to know her.
She taught me what love was. And not just the kind that feels like fireworks. I’m talking about the kind that lingers. The kind that holds. The kind that stays with you when the lights are off and the road ahead is long.
I left.
I was young. Unsure of myself. Hungry for something I couldn’t name. I thought there’d be more, thought the world had something bigger waiting out there. And maybe it did. But it didn’t come with her hand in mine.
And I’ve spent a lot of nights thinking about that choice.
I think about how she loved—strong, hard, no fear. I think about how I didn’t know how to hold something so good, so honest. I let her go because I thought I needed to find me. Turns out… I left her behind to do it.
And now the years have rolled on. I don’t know where she is. Maybe she’s got a family. Maybe she still lives in that town with the gravel roads and the big sky. Maybe she still remembers the way I looked at her that last night. Or maybe she’s long since let go.
But if I could do it again—just once—I’d hold her in my arms, our kids asleep upstairs, the sound of life humming gently in the house we built together.
I’d tell her I finally learned how to stay.
That I became the kind of man who wouldn’t run.
That I’d never let go again.
But the past is a road with no return.
So this is Chris in the Morning, sending this one out into the sky, into the wind, into the places where old love still lives.
If you’re listening—if you ever hear this—just know:
It was one of those hazy Saturday nights, the kind where the air feels thick with possibility and the weed hits just right. My best friend had been dating her for a few months—perfect face, high cheekbones, lips that could stop traffic, and a body that was thick in all the right places, curves that made my pulse race every time she walked into a room. She was a hood girl from the wrong side of town, with that raw edge in her laugh and a swagger that hinted at a life I’d never known—tough streets, late-night fights, and a survival instinct sharp as a blade. From the moment I met her, there was this electric pull, a silent current between us that neither of us acknowledged but both felt. Tonight, she was at my place, lounging on my couch while my friend and I passed a joint back and forth, the sweet, skunky smoke curling around us like a shared secret.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her—those tight jeans hugging her hips, the way her shirt clung to her chest. She caught my stare once, her eyes locking with mine through the haze, and I swear the room tilted. My friend, mellowed out and oblivious, mumbled something about needing the bathroom and shuffled off, leaving us alone. The second the door clicked shut, she was on me. No words, just this raw, urgent need. She straddled my lap, her hands fumbling with my belt, her breath hot against my neck as the weed-fueled buzz amplified every sensation. I didn’t hesitate—my hands were under her shirt, gripping her waist, pulling her closer as I yanked her jeans down just enough.
It was fast, desperate. She guided me inside her, and the heat of her was overwhelming, tight and perfect, her moans muffled against my shoulder. Her nails dug into my back, her body trembling as she came almost instantly, pulling me over the edge with her. We finished just as the bathroom door creaked open—barely time to pull apart, adjust clothes, and pretend nothing happened. She slid back to her spot, face flushed but composed, while I sat there, heart pounding, trying to focus on the joint’s lingering glow.
He came back, oblivious, taking the joint from my hand and taking a hit, plopping down between us. We passed it around like nothing had changed. But everything had. That quick, silent connection—it burned into me, into her. I could feel her gaze on me when he wasn’t looking, a secret thread tying us together. We never spoke of it, but from that night on, we were bound, a silent pact forged in those stolen moments, forever lingering in the smoky air between us.
Years passed, a decade slipping by like a quiet tide. I didn’t chase her with desperation or scour the streets in a frantic search—there was no need. That moment had frozen us, a union between two souls who recognized each other in an instant, a bond that needed no words or pursuit to endure. Recently, I stumbled across a county jail roster online. There she was, listed among the inmates, her mugshot staring back at me, still stunning despite the hollowed cheeks and tired eyes.
That recognition from a decade ago still hums in my chest, a steady pulse that time hasn’t dulled. Part of me considers driving down there, seeing her behind the glass, letting that silent connection speak again. Another part wonders if she feels it too, if those stolen moments linger for her as they do for me, etched into her soul behind those jail walls. Do I reach out, offer a presence, a link to that night? Or do I let the memory stand alone, a perfect snapshot of two people who saw each other clearly, frozen in time? The choice hangs heavy, but the bond remains, unshaken.
I built a place in me for her—long before I knew her name. Stone by stone, silence by silence, I shaped the waiting like a cathedral and called it hope.
But she never arrived. Or maybe she did—wearing someone else’s voice, someone else’s wounds. And I missed her while trying to recognize a dream too fragile to survive translation.
I left lights on in every room of my soul. I wrote invitations in every breath. I made my anger polite, my sadness poetic, my chaos a story with structure. Still—no one came.
I listened to other men speak of women who ruined them with beauty. I envied them. To be ruined is at least to be touched. I have been weathered only by absence.
I have loved the outlines of possibility so long, I forgot how to touch something real without comparing it to what never was.
So bury it here. Bury the myth. The girl who would understand without asking, who would lean in without testing, who would see me without scanning for threats I didn’t create.
Let the dream rot back into the soil. Let the chapel collapse under its own loneliness. Let the quiet finally mean nothing except silence.
And if she ever comes—late, weathered, wrong key in hand—let her find nothing waiting. Not out of cruelty. But mercy. Because I’ve already grieved the life we never had.
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.
