I’ve spent a lot of time writing about love. About heartbreak, about longing, about the strange magic that happens when two people try—sometimes clumsily, sometimes beautifully—to choose each other in a world that keeps pulling them apart.

To both of my dads—the one who gave me life and the one who gave me everything else—I carry your lessons in my bones. I carry your love like armor. I’m who I am because of you. And I’m thankful for that every single day.

No curated playlists. No matching sets. Just breath, gravel, and whatever mood the river’s in that day. Rio Park doesn’t care if I’m tired or torn open. It just lets me show up anyway.

You don’t realize you’ve fallen in love with a city until it starts loving you back. Not in dramatic, fireworks-over-the-river kind of ways, but in the slow, quiet details. In the routines. In the tiny nods of recognition that only come with time.