The Moment the Wind Held Its Breath

The wind lifted my hair like a question I had not yet answered, and for a long while I let it. I stood on the rooftop where the city hummed below in amber and shadow, my jacket slipping from one shoulder because I had stopped fighting it. He did not rush me into warmth that night; he simply sat beside me, his hand resting an inch from mine—close enough to feel the heat of him, far enough to let me choose.
I learned love not as a flood but as a tide: patient, returning, never demanding I be less than still. When at last I turned and the cross at my throat caught the streetlight, he smiled without words and tucked his sleeve over my bare shoulder as if it were the most natural thing in the world. That was the just-right moment—the one I have kept ever since: not grand, not loud, but a quiet promise held between two people who understood that to love well is to wait, gently, for the other to breathe out.

Editor: Grace