Curating one’s life

The first woman I ever loved left me for a piano player.

Worse, he lived nearby, and when I'd sometimes see them

on the waterfront esplanade in southwest Washington, D.C.

I'd feel sorry for myself and for the love I had lost.

But he was an organist schooled at a mid-tier music conservatory

who wooed while performing only for her one evening in a church

while I was perhaps out meeting one of a motley of ISO women

losing at that very moment what I thought I was looking for.