The Salt-Scented Memory of You

My skin still tastes of the city's humid August—salt, exhaust fumes, and a lingering trace of your citrus cologne. We spent three years sharing cheap convenience store coffee in silence while the neon lights blurred into rivers outside our window.
I remember how you looked at me without ever touching my hand; it was an ache that felt like sunlight on cold skin, beautiful but distant. I loved you with a quiet desperation that mirrored the rhythmic hum of air conditioners during power outages—constant and invisible.
Now, I stand atop this concrete peak as evening bleeds into purple. The wind carries away everything except your memory. My dress ripples like water around my ankles; it is thin enough to feel every breath of air, almost intimate in its vulnerability.
I have learned that healing is not the absence of pain, but living with it until you become familiar with each other. I do not wait for you anymore. Instead, I let myself dissolve into this light—a soft surrender where my loneliness feels like a kind of grace.

Editor: Summer Cicada