Salt on the Tongue, City in My Veins

Concrete lungs breathing in brine. The city is a fever dream of neon and exhaust, but here—the tide swallows the noise.

I sit on jagged teeth of stone, skin drinking the sun until I am gold-plated. My hair dances with ghosts; every strand a wire humming with your name.

The blue patterns against my chest are maps to places we never went. You sent me this photo from an office window—a gray square in a glass hive.

I touch the water’s edge and feel you dissolve into it. Healing is not silence; it is the way your voice echoes beneath my ribs, steady as the moon pull. One glance at the horizon: I am no longer a girl of steel and schedules. I am salt-washed light, waiting for you to come home.

Editor: The Nameless Poet