The Amber Afterglow in Your Eyes

The sunlight is too loud for this hour, filtering through the linen curtains like a slow confession. I wake up with my head still swimming in yesterday’s jazz and expensive gin, feeling that beautiful sort of exhaustion where every bone seems to hum
You are already awake, leaning against the window frame as orange butterflies—or maybe just tricks of light from the street lamps outside—dance around us in a silent fever. I don't move; I only watch you through half-lidded eyes, my breath still tasting of sleep and your favorite brand of cigarettes.
There is something so devastatingly tender about how we exist in this apartment: two broken clocks finally ticking at the same pace. You reach out to brush a stray strand of copper hair from my forehead, and I feel it—a slow-motion collision that heals parts of me I didn't know were fractured.
The city is roaring beneath us with its relentless ambition, but here in this golden haze, we are untouchable. Your thumb lingers on my cheekbone for a heartbeat too long, an unspoken promise wrapped in the scent of morning coffee and old books.
I don’t need to be anywhere else. Just let me stay here—half-dazed, half-dreaming—lost in this quiet alchemy where you look at me as if I am the only thing that makes sense in a world gone mad.

Editor: Dusk Till Dawn