Once Upon Us

Everything begins with a glance across a quiet classroom. The boy does not yet know the word love but recognizes its light. When the girl suddenly disappears, he asks the trees and rain where she has gone. Her face and name may fade, yet the imprint of her soul becomes the first thread in a story that will last a lifetime.

The first encounter arrives without a grand confession. It lives inside an ordinary classroom, her springlike laughter and a moment when the surrounding world disappears for two children. The boy cannot yet distinguish love from wonder, but he senses that something has awakened and must not be forgotten. This lack of understanding gives Once Upon Us its purity. The feeling needs neither proof nor a plan and exists before every word he will later use to explain it. Then the girl vanishes without farewell and moves to the far side of town. To a child that distance is impossible. His search turns toward nature, and the trees and rain become confidants for a question he cannot ask the adults. Time gradually erases her face and name but not the sense of a soul within the flame. That surviving imprint becomes the foundation of the album. Love can lose its visible form and still shape the person who once encountered it. The unfinished final line is not a missing ending. It is an open door into a lifetime in which the boy will keep searching for the same presence through other faces, returns and transformations.