Tag: love
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Il Cuore di Claire
Claire never thought she’d be the kind of woman to leave everything behind. For twenty-eight years, her life had been neat and predictable a tidy house in Portland, a teaching job she liked well enough, and a marriage that had felt, in the beginning, like a promise of adventure. Her new husband, Evan, loved to…
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Length of November
The first snow always made Naia think of him.Not because they’d ever shared a snowfall together he’d left before winter but because of the way he used to trace shapes in the fog of his breath on her car window. “See? Instant art,” he’d said, as though the fleetingness of things was part of the…
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The Summer We Didn’t Say Goodbye
There are some summers that don’t feel real until they’re over. The air hangs heavier. The sunsets last longer. And every moment feels like it’s trying to tell you something you just don’t know what yet. Claire still thinks about that first date on the back road. It wasn’t planned. Not officially. He texted her…
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Sweaters, Static, and Almost
The first thing Claire noticed about fall that year was the smell. Not just pumpkin spice drifting from café doors or apple cider simmering in crockpots at church gatherings but the sharper scent beneath it all. The scent of change. Crisp leaves cracking under boots. Cold air settling into the spaces between breaths. The kind…
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Breathing Again
There is something sacred about the moment you realize you can finally take a full breath. Not the shallow kind. Not the tight, cautious inhale that sits high in your chest. I mean the kind that fills your lungs all the way down. It softens your shoulders. It reminds you that you are still here.…
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Things I’m Learning While Chasing My Dreams
Life changes have a way of exposing just how tightly we’ve been holding on to people, expectations, old stories, and a sense of control that was never really there in the first place. When everything around you starts to shift, the instinct is often to grip harder, to manage every detail, to make sure nothing…
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Meet me under the Porch light.
There’s a certain feeling that doesn’t disappear, no matter how much time passes. It softens. It settles. It tucks itself into the quiet corners of your life and waits patiently, like it always knew you’d come back. In small towns, nothing really leaves for good. Not the old tire swing behind the school. Not the…
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Post cards I never sent
The town leaned toward the water, like it was listening. Evergreen trees crowded the edges of everything. They stood patient and dark. Their needles caught the rain that never quite decided to fall all at once. The ferry horn sounded some mornings, low and tired, as if even it needed coffee first. I bought postcards…
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Loving a City That Loved Me Back Differently
London was never just a place to me. It was a season. A relationship. A promise I believed in longer than I should have. I arrived hopeful, carrying the kind of optimism that only exists when you think starting over will fix everything. The city welcomed me in its own way gray skies, hurried streets,…
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Love of My Life, Loss of My Mind
There was a time when that relationship had me at its mercy. It wasn’t in a dramatic, movie way. It was in a quiet, everyday surrender that happens when you believe loving harder will eventually make you chosen. Back then, I thought love was supposed to feel consuming. I thought the ache meant depth, the…
Quiet Harbor Writing 