Where I End and You Begin

I cannot tell you exactly when the city's noise stopped being my rhythm. All I know is that here, where the tide erases every footprint before it can even be remembered, I am finally becoming a sketch instead of a finished page.
The shirt hangs off me like an old secret—his scent still clinging to the fabric in whispers of cedar and rain. It slips just so, revealing skin that feels too warm against this salty breeze, a soft transgression between what is covered and what belongs only to us. I look toward the horizon not because there is something to see, but because I am learning how to be empty.
We spent years building walls out of schedules and spreadsheets in high-rise offices where light was artificial and hearts were muted. But tonight, as my fingertips trace a line across my own hip that only he knows by touch, I feel the edges of myself blurring into the ocean’s grey mist. The air is thick with things unsaid—the kind of silence that doesn't need filling because it’s already full.
I don't know if we are moving toward a new beginning or simply letting go of an old one. I only know that when he looks at me from across the sand, his gaze isn't on who I am supposed to be, but on the spaces between—the soft curve where my breath falters and your name begins.

Editor: The Unfinished