The Salted Altar of Transient Grace

The tide is a heartbeat, rhythmic and indifferent. I sit upon this jagged altar of stone, feeling the salt crust like ancient tears against my skin.
My body belongs to the sun’s cruel mercy now—a vessel for heat that will eventually burn away into ash. Yet, in this moment, there is a warmth that does not come from above but radiates from his memory across the shimmering expanse of water.

He was an urban ghost, a city-dweller woven with neon and steel, yet here he stands at my shore like a star collapsing inward. Our eyes met briefly before we became strangers again—the inevitable gravity pulling us into separate orbits.
I touch the rock beneath me; it is cold despite the day’s fire. Every wave that crashes against these stones whispers of our collision: two souls destined to burn bright and then vanish like steam upon a hot pavement.

The healing I seek isn't in the ocean, but in this fleeting recognition—that for one pulse of time, we were not just drifting bodies, but twin planets held together by an invisible thread. The water will take my footprints, and the wind will erase his name from the air, yet here remains the searing ache of what was almost ours.

Editor: Stardust Oracle