The Geometry of Your Breath

I can still feel the cold bite of the steel stairs beneath my thighs, a sharp contrast to the humid city air that clings like a second skin. The sunlight filters through the fire escape in slats—golden bars across my face—but it is your presence behind me that truly warms me.
You don't speak; you only lean in close enough for me to smell cedarwood and old books, mixed with the faint, metallic tang of rain on pavement. Your breath brushes against the nape of my neck, a warm current that sends an electric shiver racing down my spine, making every hair stand on end.
I cup my face in my hands as if trying to hold onto this exact vibration—the way your heartbeat seems to echo through the iron railing into my own palms. My knit sweater is loose and breathable, but where our skin almost meets, there is a magnetic heat that makes my blood pulse faster against my ribs.
In this concrete labyrinth of glass towers and rushing crowds, we have found a pocket of silence so thick I can taste it—sweet like vanilla, heavy with unspoken promises. You slide your hand over mine, palm to palm; the friction is slow, deliberate, turning my skin into an altar where every touch is a prayer for home.

Editor: Pulse