Blinds become translucent, a veil lifts, reveals her secrets. I hover near—senses taste salt and sleep—caressing honeysuckle from last night’s vase. Its petals cling, damp with resolve.  

Freckles clustering, tracing her collarbone arcs: “the night we danced barefoot, summer’s rain.” Another, near the scar: “when the diagnosis came, and you held my hair back.”  

My mouth follows the bloom’s path, charting orbits. She shivers, laughs—sounding like tangled wind chimes. “I have no skills for flight,” I murmur against her spine, “or wings to skim the waves effortlessly, like the wind itself.”  

Her fingers discover mine, pressing the blossom’s ruin into our palms—sacraments of scars and summer rain

The room swells with scents of crushed green and confession. I count each freckle aloud—an almanac of survival—until the sun climbs higher, etching our shared legend into the day’s blank page.