In Every Version of Every World

The Version Where We Stayed

The morning arrived with reverence—
all hush and half-light—
as though the sky itself
feared waking us too soon.

You were already there,
folded into me
like a forgotten hymn,
your warmth strung between
the hush of my breath
and the ache of something remembered.

I didn't stir.
Just listened—
to the quiet between heartbeats,
to the silence that spoke
in a tongue older than time,
where skin and soul
are not separate things.

My hand found the curve of you
as one might find a familiar shoreline—
not to claim,
but to know.
To trace memory into meaning,
like drawing constellations
on a sky that had only ever been yours.

You moved—
barely—
a shift so small
and yet the world turned with it.
That one breath
unraveled the hush
I'd wrapped around my heart.

And so we came closer,
like tide to sand—
a sacred return.
No storm.
No crash.
Just the inevitability
of meeting again.

We spoke in the language of nearness:
your palm over mine,
our foreheads grazing,
time folding into itself
as breath became offering.

And when the moment lifted—
when everything unsaid
unfolded like morning light
spilling across an untouched field—
it wasn't a fire
but a bloom.
Not a blaze,
but a rising flood
gentle enough to carry us.

After, we stayed.
Still.
Threaded together
like dusk in dawn's arms.
Your head beneath my chin,
my thumb painting circles
over the place where peace lingers.

You—
you are my sunrise
and my softness.
My forever.

I kissed the space
just above your brow—
where all quiet beginnings are born—
and thought:

Let this be the version
where morning never ends.
Where love does not dissolve
with the breaking of day.
Where I do not have to forget
what it feels like
to be known this completely.

To be held
as if staying
was always the story
we were meant to tell.