Salt-Water Amnesia and Your Warmth

The city had become a humid cage of neon and asphalt, where every breath tasted like exhaust fumes and old regrets. I left it all behind for this strip of sand—a place where the air is thick with brine and silence.
I walk into the tide, feeling the cold Atlantic bite at my ankles while my skin still holds the ghost-warmth of your touch from last night. You are back there in that drafty beach house, probably nursing a coffee and wearing nothing but an old linen shirt that smells like cedarwood and sleep.
My white cover-up clings to me, translucent as a memory under this hazy sun. I can still feel the exact pressure of your fingers tracing my spine—a slow, deliberate rhythm that whispered things words are too clumsy for. It was less about desire and more about reconstruction; every touch felt like you were putting back together pieces of me that had shattered in some crowded subway station three years ago.
The water swirls around my feet, pulling the sand from beneath my heels—a gentle theft. I look back at you standing on the dunes, your silhouette blurred by the salt spray and light. There is no rush here. Just this heavy, honey-thick moment where time dissolves into a soft hum of pheromones and tide pools.
I’m not returning to that glass tower in the city yet. Not until I can taste you on my skin like sea salt—permanent, stinging slightly, but undeniably alive.

Editor: Midnight Neon