Golden Hours

The smell of you is still all over my skin. You're a lot of things. But it’s the way you say my name that haunts me—like a sweet secret or a long-lost prayer returning to your lips. To the folks in this town, you're a nightmare in a leather jacket. They see the scars and the silence, and they write you off as a villain. But they don't see the way your hands tremble just a little when you press a cemetery rose into my palm. Even with the petals stained by soot and bone, it felt like something sacred. Like a holy relic just for me. Anyone else would have wanted diamonds or something that glitters, but you've always seen right through me. You know I’ve never been one for the shimmer; I want something that survived. They don't know that for all your roughness, you touch me like I’m something fragile, something made of glass that you're terrified of breaking. When I saw you leaning against that rusted hood, I didn't see a criminal. I saw the only truth I’ve ever ...

Standing on the altar of the kitchen table, reaching up to bite our names into the ceiling until they shimmered there like jagged stars. Our laughter felt so heavy in my chest, I feared my lungs might simply give way. Acting fearless, like we’d be the ones to defy the odds, before we reached the end of all our rope. We were so high on the idea of us, convinced the world would just stay out of our way. What lovely, tragic fools we were. We promised this house would hold us for a lifetime. We were lying to ourselves, and we didn't even know it. We treated time like a gift we’d never have to pay back. The tea’s been sitting since eleven, turning cold inside the ceramic blue. I’m still anchored to this wooden chair in a time that doesn't belong to me and you. The clock is ticking like a warning, but the gears are grinding in my head. The kitchen’s just a graveyard now of all the "almosts" that we never said. You were always better at the "gamble" than I was. You...