#need her

a quiet silver threading through the air,

soft at first, like a secret being told to the earth.

They could have run.

Anyone else would have.

But she laughed instead, low, surprised,

tilting her face up to the sky

as though the clouds had called her name.

“You’re going to get soaked", the other said,

already smiling like she didn’t mean it.

“I already am.”

There was a pause,

the kind that stretches,

that fills itself with something unspoken,

and then a hand, warm and certain,

reaching out through the rain.

It wasn’t dramatic.

No sudden music, no perfect moment.

Just fingers brushing, then holding,

like they had always belonged there.

The street was empty.

Rainwater danced in ripples along the pavement,

and the world narrowed to the space between them,

to the way her thumb traced circles

against the back of her hand.

“Dance with me.” she said,

as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

And somehow, it was.

They moved without knowing how,

barely steps, barely rhythm,

just laughter and closeness and

the soft, inevitable pull of gravity

drawing them together.

Her hair clung to her cheeks,

her shirt darkened with rain,

but none of it mattered,

not when she looked at her like that,

like she was something worth stopping time for.

They spun slowly,

feet slipping, hearts steady,

the rain stitching them into the moment,

a quiet kind of forever

that lived only here.

“You’re staring”, she whispered.

“I know.”

“Why?”

Because you’re real, she almost said.

Because this feels like a story I don’t want to end.

So instead, she just pulled her closer.

The rain fell harder then,

like applause, like insistence,

like the sky itself refused to look away.

And there, in the middle of an empty street,

with soaked clothes and unsteady steps,

they danced,

not beautifully,

not perfectly,

but like they had found something

they didn’t know they were missing

until it was in their hands.

—ʚ