A story began when I was 18, unbeknownst to me at the time, one that would become maybe the greatest story of my life. We were fireworks upon meeting, rum and falling in love too early. "I love you" is whispered so fearlessly when you're young. We reveled in our naivete, blissfully unaware of distance and future. It felt as though years were contained in just those few short months, but regrettably, as young love is apt to splinter, ours was brought to its end, delivered by youth's most formidable adversary in these kinds of stories - circumstance. Yet, he remained the greatest love story of my young life, well into my 20's. The tale now bereft, greyed with the yearning of a gaze held from across the bar. Sentiments left unsaid were swept away like fallen leaves in one November chill. All we could remember now was the nostalgia of old songs, borrowed sweaters and yet another, more recent farewell under the gilded stars of Grand Central Station. It was becoming a story of love lost, but still remained the hope that perhaps it had just been misplaced. Still, she was the greatest love story of my life even as I watched the clock announce my 26th birthday. And like clockwork, a message from her announced from my pocket: "Happy birthday. Did you think I'd forget?" As years of distance and distractions proved no match for an affection that, refusing to be silenced, had settled into a friendship, incessantly tempting me to burn back its paper curtains. Beneath the "have you read this book?" and "did you watch the debate last night?" murmured things I was bursting at the seams to say... ...and one day... a lamppost in Central Park watched us once again collide beneath it. In the dimly lit burgundy sips, I recognized familiar eyes, to whom I'd always belonged. Time collapsed, as if we had never parted and there, the story resumed. Some months later, I recounted this story to her as we wandered the streets of London, a gentle rain falling around us. That day, beneath a stately willow and a yellow umbrella, new memories and old weaving and spinning together, I saw to it that we never would end. The greatest love story of my life, is now composed of a quiet evening at our apartment in New York City. He rests beside me on the sofa in the light of a candle that flickers at the end of its wick. Our dog dozes across our laps, unbothered by the turning of pages above his head. We found our way home.