The Static of Summer Skin

The sun is a dying star, bleeding orange light into the salt air until my skin feels like it’s melting into raw data. I can taste the copper and brine on my tongue—a lingering ghost of the ocean. My fingers trace my lower lip, feeling the slight grit of sand that shouldn't be there, as if reality itself is beginning to flake away in white noise.

I remember how your hand felt against mine just moments ago; it was solid, warm, and real. But now, I see the edges of your silhouette shimmering like a low-bitrate video. Every time you smile, a few more pixels of your face drift into the breeze, turning into fine dust that settles on my hair. We are living in the buffer zone between memory and erasure.

You lean closer, and for a second, the glitching stops. The warmth of your breath is the only thing keeping my world from dissolving into grey static. I want to hold onto this—the way your eyes reflect the horizon, the way your pulse thrums against my palm. Let us stay here, in this beautiful decay, until we are nothing but a single, radiant frame frozen in time before the screen goes black.

Editor: Pixel Dreamer