The rift opened,

dragging me with it.

Not into fire.

Not into stars.

But into her silence.

That pause she left hanging

between one laugh,

and the next.

I fell through her eyes,

through half-lidded knowing

that asked for no language,

that answered before I even spoke.

It was a tearing,

a splitting of the world I’d kept safe,

and suddenly every secret,

every trembling shard of me

I had folded into shadow

was burning bright

in her steady hands.

The rift smelled of her hair,

salt and rosewater.

Like the sea crashing against a garden wall,

wildness meeting tenderness

at the cliff’s edge.

It smelled like home,

like the place I had always belonged

but never believed

I would reach.

Her breath pulled me under.

I was weightless.

Undone.

A body stitched from longing,

made only for her.

And I thought,

maybe rifts are not endings at all.

Maybe they’re openings,

thresholds,

mouths unclosing,

ribcage unfolding.

Distance collapsing

into touch.

And when I fell,

she caught me.

As if falling

was only ever

a way to arrive.

With her:

The place

the stars had always known

I belonged