The Tenderness We Didn't Choose

The cocktails arrive

like promises spoken in velvet.

Amber, crimson, citrine —

they swirl with insolent beauty,

each glass holding a small apocalypse

I am eager to sip.

I watch him.

A stranger with ember eyes,

burnt-soft voice,

and a smile that speaks of

rooms where clocks forget to count.

I should not be here.

My ring glints —

a thin, golden restraint

clinging quietly to my skin.

Yet, the citrus in his laughter

cuts through something old in me.

It peels back the dry,

the dutiful,

the quiet dinners spent naming the weather.

"One night," I whisper

only to myself,

as though the air

is the only thing that could judge.

He orders another round.

Something with a twist

— his eyes say it, not his mouth —

and we speak in accidental poetry,

trading words like pressed flowers,

delicate, already fading.

Outside, the city gasps and hums.

Inside, fondness drips slow

and sadness sits in the corners

like perfume that clings long after

the wearer has fled.

I want to confess everything.

I want to hold nothing.

Instead, I sip—

let the spirits tangle in my throat,

let the heat bloom reckless

behind my ribs.

His fingers graze mine

(too brief, too electric)

and in that charged absence,

I feel more alive than I should.

This is not love.

It is something thinner,

more feral.

Like hunger mistaken for tenderness.

Like ember mistaken for fire.

We do not kiss.

We do not touch again.

But when he leaves

(soft-footed as a thief),

the velvet night caves in,

and the glass before me

holds only melted fragments

of what I almost became.

I trace the rim,

thinking of home,

thinking of years that know only certainty,

thinking of his eyes,

and the twist in my chest

that tastes faintly of citrus and regret.