The Salt-Scented Silence Between Us

The humidity of August clings to my skin like a second, heavier dress. In the city, we are all just ghosts rubbing shoulders in air-conditioned silence.
I remember how your hand felt—rough, smelling of chlorine and old books—when you pulled me into this blue void. For years, I loved you with the quiet desperation of a cicada screaming into a summer storm; a love that was too loud to be spoken but too heavy to carry alone.
Now, suspended in the cool weight of the pool, gravity is an afterthought. The water swallows my breath and your doubts. Here, under the shimmering surface where light fractures into silver needles, I am not just a girl from a concrete apartment—I am something fluid, something iridescent.
You are watching me from above, your silhouette blurred by the ripples of our shared hesitation. In this suspended moment, there is no bitterness, only the slow drift of fabric against my thighs and the warmth of knowing that for once, we are breathing in unison without saying a word.
I reach upward, not to escape, but to touch the boundary between where I end and you begin.

Editor: Summer Cicada