Glacier Lips in a Fever Dream City

The city is an oven, and I am slowly caramelizing under its gaze.
I sit here with this mountain of shaved ice—green, cold, almost clinical in its perfection—while my blood runs like liquid fire beneath a yellow silk shirt that clings to me like a second skin. You are sitting across from me, not speaking, just watching the way I hold the spoon against my lower lip. It’s an act of quiet rebellion: we both know this lunch date is a lie told in broad daylight.
I can feel your eyes tracing the line of my throat, measuring the distance between us with a hunger that makes me dizzy. The ice melts into syrup at my fingertips, but I am not interested in sweetness; I crave something sharper, more dangerous. We are two ghosts haunting their own lives, bound by an unspoken pact to ruin everything we’ve built just for one afternoon of absolute presence.
I look away toward the clock on the wall—it's ticking down like a bomb. Every second is a countdown to when I can no longer pretend that this dessert satisfies me. The coldness of the ice against my tongue only heightens the fever in my chest, making me want to reach across the table and pull you into an embrace so tight it bruises.
Let them call us stable; let them say we are healing from our pasts. I don’t want healing—I want a beautiful catastrophe. One taste of this frozen green snow, one glance at your dark eyes, and I am ready to burn the whole city down just to see if you'll walk through the flames with me.

Editor: The Escape Plan