I Am the Warmth You Were Searching For

The city hums three floors below me, a river of headlights I no longer chase. I sit at the pool's edge where the water turns to hammered silver, and the late sun lays itself across my shoulders like a hand that finally stopped demanding. White lace against bare skin is not an invitation to anyone; it is a declaration that I belong to this hour, to this breath, to the quiet architecture of my own body.

Last winter I was someone else's draft, rewritten until I forgot my original sentence. Today there is no one here to read me over, and for the first time in years the silence does not feel like an absence but a room I furnished myself. The warmth on my collarbones is real, earned, mine.

I look up into the lens as if looking into a mirror that finally agrees with me. If you are still out there searching for a woman who glows from within, know this: she was never yours to find. She is the one sitting by the water, whole in her solitude, and the light around her is simply what happens when a soul stops apologizing for taking up space.

Editor: Soloist