Fractured Light, Tender Scars

The chipped brick felt cold against my back. Good. I needed something real.
He always found me in these moments – adrift, they call it. Lost in the noise of a city that doesn't care. He’d say something about needing to calibrate his compass with my chaos.
I used to bristle at 'chaos'. It sounded… messy. Like everything I tried not to be. Now? It feels like truth. A raw, unfiltered energy he seems oddly drawn to.
The lace feels ridiculous against the grey concrete. He doesn't say it. He just looks. And in his eyes, there’s no judgment, only a recognition of something broken trying to find its own strange beauty. That's new.
He thinks I don’t notice how he studies me, mapping out every curve and shadow like he’s memorizing the terrain. Let him look. He won't find anything easy, nothing readily given. But maybe, just maybe, that’s the point.

Editor: Hedgehog