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You ask me why it hurts when you’re gone— why the nights stretch so long my lungs forget how to breathe, why tears climb my throat like they were born there. It’s the cold. Not the kind a blanket fixes, but the kind that settles deep beneath skin, where loneliness curls itself around bone and whispers you do not belong here. But then you arrive. And suddenly the world softens. The air comes back easy, except when your hands circle my throat and my smile betrays me— because even in surrender I feel seen. I tease you, push at your edges, test the fire in your restraint, only because I trust you’ll never let me fall too far. Against your chest I finally sleep. Your heartbeat becomes a language my body understands better than words. And when I cry there, it isn’t from pain. It’s from the terrifying relief of finding somewhere I don’t have to survive alone. In your hands, I stop bracing for impact. I stop wondering where I’ll end up or whether I deserve to stay. Because with you, for the first time, I am not drifting. I belong.