The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

by Josie Silver

“When you’re young you think you’ve got all the time in the world,” she says. “And then suddenly you turn around and you’re old and one of you isn’t there anymore and you wonder how the years went so fast.” She nods toward Freddie and then shrugs. “Make hay while the sun shines. That’s all I’m saying.”

but I know how it feels when someone fades out of your life without warning. It’s a shitty thing to do to someone by choice.

I wonder why it is that we fall in love with some people and not others, even when we wish we could. Billions of humans, all of us scurrying around the planet, falling in and out of love with each other for no reason explicable by logic or numbers or common sense. How unaccountably strange we are.

My heart may be a loose cannon in my chest, unsure if anyone owns it, but I’m still here.

I’ve realized that you can love people in different ways at different times of your life.