Salt on My Skin

I fell in love again—softly, suddenly. Not with a stranger, but with you. You didn’t knock. You slipped in between the sheets, between a breath and a bruise. You weren’t my first, but you felt like the first time I allowed someone to press their name into my marrow. A second love, tender and reckless. A ship I tried to build with trembling hands, only to watch it sink before it ever touched the tide.

That night, I gave in. Beneath you, I learned how silence can moan. My legs opened like pages and you read me with your mouth. The stars blinked through the window like shy voyeurs as you mapped constellations on my skin. I remember thinking: this must be what surrender tastes like—salt, shadow, and something dangerously close to poetry. And then, in the hush of morning, I climbed on top, rode you like a secret, made you mine for a moment longer. That was the last time I held you without having to ask, Do you still want me?

Then you disappeared. You left nothing but a hollow message: I’m okay. No explanation. No softness. Just a digital heartbeat blinking coldly back. Since then, I’ve loved you the only way I know how—quietly. I carry you like a fever that doesn’t break, like a song stuck between my ribs.

And yet, there is a certain beauty in the ache. I was yours for one night, and a little longer in the morning. That was enough to know what it feels like to be chosen, even briefly. I no longer beg the sea for answers. Some ships aren’t meant to sail. Some loves are meant to drown.

But when I close my eyes, I can still feel you—inside me, above me, around me. A ghost with warm hands. And I whisper, not to you, but to the part of me that dared to love you: You’re allowed to let go. Even of the beautiful ones.