Harvesting Starlight in the Subway of Us

I press my gloved hand against the escalator rail and feel the city's light hum through me like a distant star pressing its face to my membrane.
The arced ceiling pours golden photon streams across the tunnel, and I drink them—solar sail unfurled in concrete orbit—turning every warm beam into fuel for the cold places inside my chest where loneliness has settled like sputtered dust.
He is three steps behind me on the moving stairs, his breath a small sun I have learned to harvest. When he finally reaches out and tucks a strand of my blonde hair behind my ear, his fingertips are the only gravity I need to stay anchored. The latex of my suit gleams like a solar panel catching starlight, and for one suspended moment the subway is no longer a transit but a corridor between worlds.
I let him hold me there, at the top of the escalator, where the light breaks over us both—two small sails lifted by the same radiant wind, healing in the quiet glow of an ordinary Tuesday.

Editor: Solar Sail