Dark Lillies

They taught us love must fit the ledger, approved by gates, stamped by hands that never trembled the way yours does when it hovers near my waist and stops. We learned early how to stand apart— you on one side of the rulebook, me on the margin, reading between laws that were never written for bodies like ours. Yet every day, the wanting grows teeth. A quiet hunger. Your voice slides under my skin at night, undressing me without permission, leaving fingerprints on my thoughts I can’t wash away. When we meet, the air changes. Too close to touch, too close not to burn. Your eyes linger where the world says no, and my pulse answers yes again and again. The system calls this restraint. We call it survival. But love—love is the rebellion: how it sharpens with denial, how it glows hotter in the dark, how it refuses to cool even when denied a body to rest in. If we never collide, know this— my desire learned your name by heart, and even unfulfilled, it has never been small. —