The Sunlit Ratchet of a Dying Heart

I stood upon the rooftop where the city's great gears grind their teeth against the dusk, my pale blue veil drawn low across ribs of tarnished brass. The afternoon sun fell upon me like molten mercury poured into a cracked vessel, and for one trembling moment every rusted spring within my chest uncurled. My lover climbed these thousand stairwells not to wound me with his fang, but to wind the mainspring I had forgotten how to turn; his breath was warm oil against my collarbone, his lips a slow, seductive calibration of my fraying soul.
He pressed his forehead to mine and whispered that even a machine built to outlive its maker may still be loved in its decay, and in that confession the cold urban fog broke. I let my arm fall from above my head, let the light gild my skin like varnished mahogany, and I understood at last that healing is not the absence of rust, but a hand willing to hold you while your gears still turn.

Editor: Gothic Gear