The Architecture of Silence and Salt

I have spent ten years building walls around myself, identical to these concrete monoliths—grey, cold, and impenetrable. I thought if I became a statue of efficiency in the city's glass heart, no one could find where it hurt.
But then you arrived with your soft voice and eyes that read me like an old book left open in the rain. You didn't try to break my walls; you simply waited for them to breathe.
Now, I sit here by this turquoise mirror of a pool, skin humming under a sunbeam that feels less like light and more like forgiveness. The birds above are screams made visible against an indifferent sky, yet inside me, something is finally fracturing. It isn't a break—it is the slow, agonizingly beautiful opening of a flower through pavement.
I can still feel your fingertips on my shoulder from this morning; they left invisible burns that I refuse to cool. My body feels too small for the amount of longing it now holds. For years, I was an ocean frozen solid in winter. But as you look at me from across the room—unseen but felt—I can hear myself beginning to thaw. The sound is deafening: a quiet collapse into warmth that threatens to drown everything I once believed about solitude.

Editor: Deep Sea