The Night We Stopped the World

It started on the rooftop,

beneath a sky swollen with silence,

where broken satellites blinked like tired gods

and the city coughed steam from tired lungs.

We were two silhouettes carved in neon,

leaning against rusted rails and forgotten dreams.

You lit a cigarette like it was ceremony—

like the fire could hold back everything

about to fall apart.

Below us, taxis screamed,

horns pierced the hush of traffic lights

that blinked red for no one.

Windows flickered like warning signs,

but up here,

time held its breath.

“You ever think,” you said,

taking a drag like a sigh,

“what it would feel like

if the world just… stopped?”

I didn’t answer.

I didn’t need to.

Because I was already holding the pause

between your heartbeat and mine.

Because we were already

living in the hush

that comes before collapse.

The wind didn’t howl—

it whispered,

soft as ghosts

on their way home.

You told me about your father—

how he taught you to fix broken radios,

how you hated the way he never fixed himself.

I told you about my mother’s music—

how Chopin filled the house

even after her chair sat empty.

We spilled like ink

across hours that no one watched,

our stories bleeding into constellations

drawn on the concrete

with the tips of our toes.

Midnight came and didn’t leave.

We danced to no music,

laughed like people who’d never known rules.

We turned the rooftop

into a slow apocalypse of confessions.

And when your hands found mine,

they shook—not from cold,

but from the weight

of all the worlds

you never thought someone would hold.

We talked about the endings

that didn't make headlines.

The best friend who left without goodbye.

The letter you never mailed.

The birthday call that didn’t come.

The version of yourself you buried

at 2:17 a.m.

on a Wednesday

no one remembers.

And somehow—

beneath all that grief,

there was grace.

We leaned into it.

Let our wounds breathe.

Let our fears sit with us,

not as enemies

but as proof

that we were still real.

The sky cracked once—

thunder like an opening statement.

But still, no rain.

Just the smell of promise

before everything changes.

We counted planes that blinked above,

talked about disappearing.

“How far do you think you can go

before the past catches up?”

“Far enough,” you whispered.

“Or at least... far enough to matter.”

I didn’t tell you then,

but that night

was the farthest I’d ever been

from the version of myself

that kept silent in crowds

and wrote poems no one read.

Because with you,

I was loud in my stillness.

I was seen

without needing to perform.

And when the sun threatened

to rise again—

to ruin the fragile miracle

we had built in the dark—

you looked at me and said,

"Let’s pretend it’s still night."

So we did.

We turned our backs on the skyline,

ignored the clocks,

and swore under fading stars

that some moments

shouldn’t end

just because the light says so.

You carved your name in the metal

with a house key.

I kissed your shoulder

like it was a book I was finishing

but not ready to return.

And when the first ray

broke the horizon like spilled ink,

we stood still,

two rebels

refusing the morning.

We didn’t speak.

We didn’t move.

We didn’t look away.

Because that night—

we didn’t run from the storm.

We became it.

Not thunder, not lightning—

but the hush between.

The pause that makes sound holy.

We walked down the fire escape

with the storm still in our bones,

carrying the rooftop like a secret.

And though morning claimed the sky,

we knew—

some nights don’t end.

They just echo

forever

in the people who lived them.

By[Kevin]