My fingers hover above the screen, thumbs circling like birds of prey narrowing in on dinner, unsure if I should comment. He stole away the woman I love.

The picture says it all: Lily has fallen into the arms of an overgrown beard with out-of-date glasses, stupidly letting a ring slide onto her finger. She displays the proposal with her left hand laid on his chest and his arm held possessively around her waist.

But that is Lily’s fake smile.

I tilt my head and tell Lily it’s okay. She doesn’t have to lie. She sighs with relief, shoulders melting away from her neck, and she shimmies out of his embrace. I reach through the screen and our palms join together as if she never left. I easily lift her through my phone, kissing her forehead as she gracefully steps out and nestles into the place my shoulder and neck meet. I hold her close. We fit together perfectly - her curves puzzle-piece into mine confirming we are destined soulmates. Lily stretches her hand out in front of our faces and I smile. The ring looks so natural on her second-to-last finger. I gave her this ring; pulled it out from the shoebox shoved under my bed. I had hidden the diamond beneath a layer of old newspapers and crumpled homework sheets only a month into our relationship, knowing this was the woman I was to marry.

The invitation comes in the mail just two weeks later, scolding my heart for falling so deeply in love with a woman I can’t have. I hold the white lace envelope between my fingers, knowing that handwriting all too well: it left me notes on the kitchen table before running off to work and cards attached to roses “just because.”

And that handwriting had scratched out scars in my chest, two pages in length, explaining every reason she “couldn’t be gay.”

She didn’t even address the wedding envelope with my full name. Just “To Carol.” But I would have been naïve not to notice that she had scrawled out a hidden love, still buried under all of her shame and remorse, in a small simple heart dotted above the “I” of my name.

“I’ll always love you, baby,” she smiles.

"I love you, too, Lily. I always will.”

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LIZ LOGBACK is a full-time Creative Writing student at Columbia College Chicago. She was born a sunflower child in Manhattan, Kansas with ink in her blood and now lives in Chicago. Her writing is inspired by Eve Ewing and Sylvia Plath, two of her favorite authors. This is Liz’s first publication.