I remember you, not in moonlight or sonnets, but in the stench of smoke-filled pillows, half-smirked apologies, and the cold hum of your phone screen glowing too long after midnight.

Love didn’t bloom here, it cracked through concrete where **** and poppies tried to coexist, where we kissed like threats, mouths drunk on leftover gin and borrowed forgiveness.

You spoke in edits, cutting out truths like clutter, calling silence “space,” calling me “intense,” like affection was something to ration, not pour.

I touched your skin and felt the echo of all the hands before mine, none of them holy, just loud.

Hope tasted metallic. I bled through your quiet, left fingerprints on walls you never looked at, and wrote poems you never posted.

So when they ask where wildflowers go, I say: some rot. Some get plucked by liars. Some learn to bloom with fists. And some break through anyway, but they don’t weep. They spit.

In trembling arms I stood on the edge to begin new skin.
Her ghost still warmed our mattress, yet I dared to begin new skin.

Your fingertips mapped the hollow of memory to begin new skin.
Grief, soft as a wild thing, intertwined with desire to begin new skin.

In that hush where past and future whispered, I chose to begin new skin.
Not betrayal but benediction unfolded in each breath to begin new skin.

Dawn sifted through blinds, prayers pressed to my ribs to begin new skin.
Loss and longing cupped me tenderly, shaping courage to begin new skin.

In the gravity of your hold I claimed grace again to begin new skin
This heart, once fractured, mends with every pulse, Geof learns to begin new skin.

You reached with certainty, as if you'd studied my skin long before our hands ever touched. No fear. Just knowing.

We moved slow, not out of caution, but to taste every second like it was gospel poured from a cracked bottle.

You pressed against me, not hard, but whole. Chest to chest, breath syncing, a rhythm we didn’t learn but recognized in our bones.

Fingertips made circles, small and deliberate, as if they were writing scripture in flesh and memory. I answered in low vowels, open-palmed and unguarded.

The bed welcomed us, an altar already blessed, creased sheets echoing rituals, springs tuned to our rhythms.

Kisses landed where language failed, soft declarations etched into collarbones, the curve of spine, the held breath behind a quiet moan.

You whispered through clenched teeth, not out of restraint but reverence, as if the act itself demanded silence to be truly understood.

Limbs tangled, not in conquest, but in communion. What we shared had gravity, pulling confessions from every nerve, truths we hadn’t known we needed to speak.

When stillness found us, we lay in the wreckage of something beautifully undone, your pulse pressed into mine, our names somewhere in the ceiling where the echoes hadn’t quite settled.

We touched, the first time since... - Why do I feel so tearful?

You pulled up slick, grin full of trouble, eyes saying I know what you need, and I've got breath to match.

We skipped the soft talk, went straight to it; your lips hit skin like they had something to prove. Tongue like prayer, hands steady, you took me apart while the night watched through the blinds.

Then I spun you, dropped low, spoke fluently in every moan your body offered. No shame, just heat and hunger wrapped in rhythm and spit, us trading places till the whole room blurred.

Every inch worshipped, no shortcuts, just truth dripping from mouths made for confession. This? It wasn’t just head; it was understanding, shared breath, the kind of gospel that makes your knees weak and your spine remember.

After? We laughed, not like kids, but like royalty who’d tasted the crown and knew it was worth every word we never said.

I hear your blackness settling like dust across the loom of my lungs, each inhale a cavern so vast it echoes the promise of light. I know it will pass, but it is so dark.

In this calm of shadows, I count heartbeat by heartbeat, tracing the arc of a dawn that stubbornly waits beyond the wall. Hope is a whispered witness to the weight of night-time’s cloak.

My thoughts coil like wrought iron, heavy with the memory of blue. Still, I carry the ember of knowing that every eclipse holds its end, that even the longest winter breaks beneath a patient sun.

So, I honour the black, its truth and its chill, and trust in the slow return of colour. Until then, I will hold this candle, flickering against the void, a small blaze declaring that night bows to morning.

I. The Azure Mourning

As the day starts, where the sky holds its breath,
I walked with the blue, soft, aching, and dressed
In robes of regret, stitched with threads of delay,
Where the sun rose reluctant and shadows would stay.

The wind wore a sigh, and the trees bent low,
Their leaves like lost letters that no one would know.
My thoughts were a tide that refused to recede,
Each wave a whisper, each whisper a need.

Blue was the colour of longing unspoken,
Of promises cracked and mirrors broken.
It clung to my ribs like a song out of tune,
A lullaby drowned beneath a waning moon.

II. The Threshold

Then came the black, not sudden, but slow,
A seep through the seams where the sorrows would go.
It gathered in corners, in marrow, in breath,
A silence that sang of a colder death.

No thunder announced it, no scream split the air,
Just the folding of light into layers of despair.
The blue bowed its head, and the black took the throne,
A monarch of numbness, austere and alone.

I wandered through valleys where echoes were still,
Where joy was a rumour and hope was ill.
The stars turned their faces, the night would not speak,
And time wore a mask that was hollow and bleak.

III. The Labyrinth

In caverns of thought, I searched for a flame,
But the torch had gone out, and none knew my name.
The walls were of ink, the floor made of sighs,
And the ceiling was stitched with forgotten goodbyes.

I met my own shadow and asked it to stay,
But it vanished like warmth at the edge of the day.
I drank from the chalice of sleepless unrest,
And wore the black crown on my shivering chest.

IV. The Stillness

Yet in that abyss, where no light dared to gleam,
Where even the blue was a half-remembered dream,
There stirred a faint tremor, a breath not my own.
A whisper of silver in monochrome stone.

Not hope, not salvation, not joy’s sudden spark,
But the knowledge that even the deepest is marked.
That black is a colour, not absence alone,
And even in silence, the soul can be known.

So I sit with the black, not fearing its name,
Not asking for mercy, not seeking acclaim.
I honour its weight, its shadow, its hue,
For it once held the blue, and it once held me too.