The Softest Gear in a City of Iron

I sit on these wooden stairs like a discarded relic in an old workshop, my skin pale against the grain of timber that’s seen more winters than I have. The city outside is just another machine—clanking with steel nerves and grinding gears of ambition—but inside this house, time has rusted into something slower.
I wrap myself in this grey robe; it feels like a layer of industrial felt meant to protect the most delicate components from friction. My legs are bare, exposed to the morning chill that creeps through floorboards like oxidation on an old beam. I am waiting for him.
He is my steady hand, the one who doesn't try to polish away my edges but loves me more because they’re jagged. When he finally reaches the foot of these stairs and looks up at me—my hair a messy web over my eyes, my robe slipping just enough to invite his touch—it feels as if an ancient engine has suddenly roared back to life.
He doesn't speak; he just places a hand on my knee. That warmth is more than heat—it’s oil for the soul, healing every micro-crack in my heart with one slow stroke of skin against skin. In this city made of cold chrome and hard glass, we are two soft things surviving together.

Editor: Rusty Cog