The Salt-Stained Memory of Your Skin

I have spent years archiving my heart like a museum curator—carefully labeling every fracture, preserving each silence in acid-free paper. In the city's relentless hum, I became an artifact of myself: polished on the surface but hollow beneath.
Then came you. You did not ask for history; you simply offered me this coast at golden hour. As the sun dips low, painting my skin with light that feels like a forgotten promise, I realize how long it has been since I felt truly present in my own body. The salt air clings to us, heavy and sweet, blurring the line between where the ocean ends and we begin.
You are leaning against me now—not as an anchor, but as warmth itself. Your breath is a slow tide against my shoulder, steadying the rhythm of a heart that had forgotten how to beat for anything other than survival. I close my eyes, allowing your fingertips to trace old scars with such reverence that they no longer feel like wounds, but maps leading home.
In this fleeting amber light, we are not two people meeting; we are time itself folding back on us. The city is a distant echo, and for the first time in decades, I do not wish to archive this moment. I only want to live inside it until my skin remembers how to glow again.

Editor: Antique Box