Milk-White Silence and Crimson Petals

The sunlight is too loud for this hour, filtering through the blinds in dusty gold stripes that make me want to close my eyes and never open them again. My head still feels heavy with yesterday’s wine—the kind of dizzy warmth that lingers like a slow jazz record playing in another room.
He left before I woke up, but he left behind this ritual: a tub filled with milk-white water so thick it felt like an embrace from someone who knows all my secrets. He scattered the roses one by one, red petals bleeding into the pale surface while I slept through three different alarms and two missed calls.
I sink deeper now, letting the warmth dissolve the rigid edges of city life—the deadlines, the subway noise, the relentless rhythm of being 'on.' Here, between these porcelain walls, time doesn't tick; it ripples. My floral lace clings to me like a second skin that’s finally breathing.
I can still smell his cologne on my shoulder and see the faint smudge of lipstick on the bathroom mirror—a ghost of our last kiss before dawn. I don’t want to get out. I just want to drift in this creamy silence, half-awake and entirely content, until the world remembers how to be gentle.

Editor: Dusk Till Dawn