We Fold

I start here,

watching your laugh tumble out like coins in slow motion,

bright and reckless,

clinking against the inside of my chest.

Your shoulder brushes mine,

and the air shifts,

small gravity pulling me closer without ceremony.

It’s the sort of thing you pretend not to notice—

the warmth lingering longer than the touch itself,

like a match’s glow still on your eyelids.

Every word you speak

arrives as if carried by invisible threads,

meant for me alone,

threading through the noise,

knotting in the soft space between heartbeats.

I forget to breathe.

Then,

it changes.

You look at me like you’ve been keeping a secret,

and suddenly my pulse is not my own.

The world seems brighter,

edges smudged in gold,

as if even the shadows want to lean in.

I think about how skin holds heat,

how time isn’t fair,

how we will leave fingerprints in places we’ve never been.

And though nothing was promised,

something in me already knows:

if this is a story,

I don’t want to read the ending alone.