The Humidity of a Shared Umbrella

The rain does not fall; it exhales upon the city, a heavy, humid breath that clings to my skin like an old memory. Under this transparent canopy, the neon lights bleed into droplets, turning the asphalt into a river of fractured dreams. My pulse is a steady rhythm against the silence of the storm—the same way my heart beats in time with your absence.

I crouch here, suspended between the concrete and the clouds. The air smells of wet pavement and ozone, a sharp contrast to the warmth I still carry from our last encounter. You are not here, yet your scent lingers in the folds of my jacket—a ghost of cedarwood and rain-soaked cotton. It is a beautiful ache, this way of loving someone who exists only in the spaces between raindrops.

I watch the world blur behind my glasses. The city is a machine that never sleeps, grinding souls into dust while we seek solace in small gestures—a shared umbrella, a lingering glance, a hand brushed against frost. My fingers tighten around the handle; it is the only thing grounding me to this earth. In this moment, under the weeping sky, I am not alone. I am cocooned in the memory of you, finding a strange healing in the bitterness of what was and the quiet hope of what might still be.

Editor: Summer Cicada