Where the Silk Holds the Rain

The city had been loud all day, a river of horns and hurried footsteps I could still feel humming beneath my ribs. So when I finally sank into these white sheets, the silence arrived like a soft spring rain on dry earth - slow, patient, soaking in every crack I had not known was cracked.

I traced the lace along my collarbone with one fingertip, feeling the cool silk slide against warm skin, and something in my chest unclenched. The little lamp behind me breathed its honeyed light across the duvet, casting stripes like the bars of a quiet cage I had finally chosen to live inside rather than escape.

My phone lay face-down. No notifications were coming tonight, no one needed my answers but myself. And yet I kept thinking of him - how he would pull out the chair tomorrow and pour two cups of tea without asking if I was tired, because he already knew, and never made me say it.

I closed my eyes, and for the first time in weeks, the day did not follow me under the covers. The silk held me the way a hand holds an umbrella in a gentle storm: not tight, just enough to keep the rain from reaching my heart.

Editor: Evelyn Lin