Salt on the Skin, Silence in the Soul

The sun is a heavy weight against my shoulder, yet it feels lighter than the words I have kept locked behind my teeth.
I sit upon this jagged stone, a fragment of earth resisting the tide’s relentless hunger. The salt dries on my skin like tears that refused to fall—crystallized memories of a season that is already slipping through my fingers.
Behind me, the ocean exhales, a rhythmic sigh echoing the pulse in my throat. I can almost hear your name in the crash of the waves, a ghost sound that lingers just before the wind carries it away.
We are both drowning in this light, yet you are miles ahead in your own city of glass and steel. My hair dances with the breeze, reaching for a horizon that never draws closer. I am here, bathed in gold, a temporary sanctuary of flesh and water. You are there, a shadow in my mind’s eye.
Is this healing? Or is it merely the slow burning of youth under a relentless sun? I close my eyes and let the spray kiss my face. In this moment, the bitterness is sweet—a sharp, lingering ache that proves we once existed in the same breath.

Editor: Summer Cicada