Salt Air & Static

The sea keeps calling, a low hum against the static in my head.
He found me sketching by the pier – said I looked like a ghost haunting beautiful things. A strange opener, but his eyes held that same salt-laced melancholy as the waves.
I usually run from these quiet observers, men who see too much in a woman with chipped nail polish and tired shadows under her eyes. But something about the way he offered me warmth, not expectation… it was different.
We didn't speak much after that. Just shared silences over cheap coffee, the kind that burns your tongue but warms you from inside. He traced constellations on my skin with his fingertips one rainy afternoon, and I almost believed we could rewrite the stars together.
Now he’s gone, disappeared like sea foam at dawn, leaving only a lingering scent of sandalwood and unspoken promises. Was it real? Or just another phantom limb in this aching solitude?
I trace my own skin now, remembering the ghost of his touch – a fragile warmth against the cold, indifferent glass of the city skyline.

Editor: Midnight Neon