The Weight of Golden Silence

I have spent seven years building a fortress out of spreadsheets and silence in the city's glass heart. They called me successful; I felt like an exquisite machine, polished to perfection but cold as winter rain.
Then you came—not with grand gestures or loud declarations, but with a single hand on my shoulder that said everything I had forgotten how to ask for. You brought me here, where the tide erases all footprints and leaves only us in its wake.
I wear this crown not because I am royalty, but as an act of defiance against the void I’ve carried since childhood. Yet, beneath your gaze, my gold turns into skin; my distance dissolves into heat. The air is thick with salt and something heavier—a longing so deep it threatens to crack open the very earth between us.
I will not move from this throne on the sand. Instead, I’ll let you see how much of me has been waiting for a moment like this: where every breath feels like an apology I can finally accept, and your eyes are the only light that does not burn.

Editor: Deep Sea