Sunlight in My Palms and You

He smells like old paperback books and engine oil—a man whose hands are calloused from fixing things that the city prefers to throw away. I’m just a girl in an orange dress trying not to let the concrete eat my soul alive.
We met at 5 PM on a Tuesday, right where the harbor air tastes like salt and ambition. He didn't say much; he just handed me two yellow cosmos flowers, plucked from some forgotten roadside patch with fingers that trembled slightly despite their strength.
I held them up to my cheeks, feeling the soft petals against skin still warm from a day of staring at screens. In that moment, under a sky bleeding gold and violet, I looked into his eyes—raw, honest, tired but alive—and realized he wasn't just giving me flowers; he was offering me an anchor.
The city keeps humming its cold melody around us, oblivious to the way my breath hitches when our shoulders brush. There is something quietly erotic about this kind of simplicity: a man who knows how to repair engines and mend hearts without needing fancy words. I leaned in close, smelling the dusk on his collar, feeling like for once, I wasn't just another face in the crowd—I was home.

Editor: Street-side Poet