The Hand That Held the Midnight Tide

I extend my palm into the dark, not to push you away but to test whether warmth still exists in this city of glass and indifference. The blue petals on my skin are a joke I tell myself after another season of champagne-stained solitude; the white sheet beneath my knees is the only luxury I have left, cool and silent as a museum.
Then your fingers close over mine. No diamonds, no ceremony—just the heat of a living pulse against my cold ones. In that single touch, the penthouse stops being a throne and becomes a hearth. I let myself be reached, let the midnight tide pull me from my diamond-encrusted isolation, and for one breath I am not an exhibit but a woman, healing in the dark with someone who stayed.

Editor: Champagne Noir