Good morning, Cicely.

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:

You were the best part of me.

And I loved you.

I still do.