A Breath Held Between Heartbeats

The concrete jungle hums outside these gates, a relentless machinery of deadlines and faces I no longer recognize. But here, where the light fractures through leaves like shattered glass, time slows to a crawl.
I am not running from the world; I am running toward the silence that lives in between breaths. My skin drinks the sun, each drop of warmth a tiny bandage on the bruises left by a week of gray skies and fluorescent lights. It is as if my body is trying to remember what it feels like to be alive, rather than just functioning.
They say we are made of memories, but today, I want to be made only of this: the taste of salt on my lips, the rhythmic thrum in my lungs, and the way his hand—though he isn't here yet—seems to linger on my waist in every phantom touch. He told me once that some people are like old books, beautiful but closed; I want to be the page that stays open, bathed in light.
I pause at the edge of the track, a white speck against the emerald green. In this moment, I am not a name on a resume or a face in a crowd. I am a secret whispered by the wind, healing in the golden hour's embrace.

Editor: Antique Box