When I was about twelve or thirteen, somewhere in that sweet spot where life was still mostly about cheeseburgers, football, and hoping your voice wouldn’t crack in front of a girl, this song started playing on the radio. “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” by Roberta Flack. It didn’t come in like most pop hits, no thumping beat or catchy hook. Just soft piano and subtle strings, like it tiptoed into the room and whispered something meant only for you.

I didn’t stand up and declare it my favorite song, not out loud. I didn’t even really understand what was happening in my chest the first dozen times I heard it. But something inside me gradually recognized it over a period of years. This wasn’t just a love song; this was the love song. It wrapped around me in a way I couldn’t explain, and by the end of that summer, I knew, without knowing, that it had taken permanent residence in my heart.

This woman, this voice; she was singing to one man. Just one. And whoever he was, he must’ve been carved from something sacred, because the way she sang to him was nothing short of soul-bending. She wasn’t performing. She was offering something. Confessing something. Like she had stripped herself down to nothing but truth and melody and laid it at his feet. The music didn’t push or pull—it just hovered there, gentle as breath, holding space for her voice to carry the weight.

And something in me, some small, hungry piece, began to hope. Hope that maybe, just maybe, someone could ever feel that way about me. Not for what I could do or how I looked or what I could offer—but for who I was, in that quiet place between breaths. Could a woman ever lie beside me, meet my eyes, and sing that song with her whole being? Could her voice brush across my skin and crack open the sky?

If she ever did… if a moment like that ever truly found me, this earth would light up in full color, like it had been waiting all along for love to turn the lights on.

And life… life would never be the same.