Almost Light

Made from the fabric of stolen fears,

stitched from tales I shouldn’t have believed,

love slithers on like a second skin—

It molds to my shape,

presses where I’m softest,

tightens when I breathe too deep

It leaves fingerprints beneath my ribs

and calls it embrace

It doesn’t hug. It holds.

It tightens with time

It remembers how I bled

the first time it fit just right

I feel it in the seams of my thoughts,

how it hums when I lie still,

how it sharpens when I think of leaving

It remembers every name I’ve tried to forget.

I tried to take it off once—

peeled it slow,

like burned fabric from skin.

It laughed.

You don’t take off what you’ve grown into

And still—

I reach for it.

Because nothing else

has ever fit me this well

I held you like water and you slipped through, slow and deliberate like the tide withdrawing secrets from a shore that begged to be kissed You murmured storms into my mouth, lips salt stung, breath bruised with longing and the shame of everything unspoken And I still taste the hush of you the way your hands clung not to hold, but to haunt