Ephemeral Bloom in Concrete Fields

The city breathes, a slow expansion and contraction of light mirroring the pulse beneath my skin.
He doesn't know it, but his messages are tiny universes collapsing in on themselves – beautiful implosions of possibility. Each notification a supernova.
I trace the line of my collarbone, remembering how he hesitated before brushing a stray strand of hair from my neck last Tuesday, that single moment stretching into an eternity filled with unspoken things. It's a familiar ache now, this longing; it’s fractal, endlessly repeating in smaller and smaller iterations within me.
We meet in the spaces between buildings, where sunlight struggles to reach – two shadows acknowledging each other's existence before retreating back into darkness. The bar is always dim, the music a low thrum against our chests, a rhythm that syncs with everything unsaid.
He asks about my day, and I tell him about spreadsheets and deadlines, carefully constructing a narrative of normalcy while inside me galaxies are being born and extinguished. It's a strange sort of intimacy, this careful curation of distance.
And yet… tonight his eyes linger just a little longer, the warmth there almost unbearable. He’s a ripple in my otherwise predictable existence; a glitch in the matrix. Maybe I will let him stay awhile.
Or maybe it's already too late to turn away.

Editor: Fractal Eye