Salt on the Skin, Ash in the Veins

The tide doesn't care about my ruined plans or the way my chest aches with every breath of humid air. It just keeps coming, cold and indifferent as a city skyscraper at midnight.

I sit here on these jagged rocks because they are the only things that don't move when I try to hold onto them. People call this 'scenery.' To me, it’s an interrogation room where the silence is so loud it makes my ears ring. My skin still burns from the salt—a sharp reminder of how much effort I put into trying to wash away today.

Then there was him. He didn't say anything at first; he just sat a few feet away, his presence like an anchor in a storm of white noise. When our hands brushed over the wet stone, it wasn't some grand cinematic gesture. It was small—a friction that felt more intimate than any confession.

He looked at me with eyes that saw past my defensive armor, into the parts I keep locked away like secrets in a basement. 'You look cold,' he whispered, and for once, his words didn't feel like an insult or an intrusion. They were a lifeline.

I want to push him away because it’s safer that way. If I let someone in, they see the cracks where the light leaks out of my soul. But as our fingers intertwined against the cooling sand, I realized something terrifying: his warmth is starting to feel more like home than any apartment building ever could.

Editor: Hedgehog