"Aphatos" by Yosha Bourgea reviewed by Fiddler.

The author recently reposted this story and asked if we remembered it. Some of us do and remember it as a classic.

The frame of this story is a man's indistinct memories of his first love at 13. The girl was 16, an almost unbridgeable gap.

In the story, however, they manage to bridge it. She leads him on a morning exploration of a neighboring patch of woods that her generation had made their playground. They exchange small wonders, a few confidences, a few kisses. They make love.

Memories after that time become fragmented, but the narrator keeps walking in woods to evoke the bittersweetness of what he has had and lost.

Bourgea fulfills Fiddlers law: "The best writers are the worst posters." Download this one and reformat it. The experience of reading the story without the distractions of the over-long lines is worth the effort.