I Didn't Recognize You Without the Lace
You looked like a headline I wasn’t allowed to run, all sharp angles and navy silk, standing by the library’s fireplace.
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You looked like a headline I wasn’t allowed to run, all sharp angles and navy silk, standing by the library’s fireplace.
The way you handled that upright bass—all thick wood and vibrating tension—should have been a federal travel warning for anyone with a pulse.
You didn't look like a tourist; you looked like a breach in a perimeter I’d spent a decade and a half building.
The way your thumb traced the rim of your glass had the same heavy, rhythmic intent as a man cleaning a sidearm.
The humidity in the Berkshires during August doesn’t just sit on you; it negotiates with your dignity until you’re both translucent.
Your thumb was hooked into my belt loop, dragging the denim just enough to let the draft hit my skin while the stove hummed.
The diesel engines hummed beneath the floorboards, a low-frequency growl that shook the marrow of their bones as they moved together.
There’s a specific way a stranger’s thumb feels against your pulse when they’re deciding if they want to ruin you or not.
I watched the way your thumb smoothed over the flour on the marble, a rhythmic, unconscious erasure of everything but our immediate proximity.
You were vibrating at a frequency that shouldn't exist in a city governed by the laws of thermodynamics and the MBTA.
The humidity in Tulum was a physical weight, like a bad quarterly projection, and you were standing by the mezcal bar looking like a liability.
My pulse was a frantic, irregular rhythm in my neck, a physiological betrayal of the clinical indifference I’d spent six years perfecting.