The Blue Hour of Forgetting

I spent three years perfecting the art of being untouchable. My hair is a frozen waterfall—icy white fading into an ocean blue that warns people not to dive too deep; they’ll only freeze or drown.
He thinks he's special because he noticed I take my coffee black when it rains and honey-sweet when I’m lying about how much sleep I got. He calls me 'crystalline.' I told him that crystals are just rocks under pressure, meant to be looked at behind glass—not touched.
But tonight, the city is humming a low frequency of loneliness, and my apartment feels like an oversized museum where I am both curator and exhibit. When he walked in without knocking—his coat smelling of wet pavement and cedarwood—I wanted to tell him to leave before he caught whatever melancholy was leaking from my walls.
Instead, I let the silk robe slip just a fraction off one shoulder. A calculated vulnerability. He didn't say anything; he just leaned his forehead against mine, breathing in sync with me until the silence stopped feeling like an empty room and started feeling like home.
I’ll probably tell him tomorrow that this was a lapse in judgment. I'll be sharp again by breakfast. But for now, under these dim lights, let my coldness melt into something soft enough to hold.

Editor: Hedgehog