A First Encounter.....

The town sleeps, wrapped in the hush of streetlights, the distant hum of power lines, the sigh of trees shifting in the breeze. He moves through it like a ghost, barefoot on the pavement, the night cool against his skin. This is the only time he feels real.

He walks without a destination, tracing invisible paths, listening to the whisper of his own breath. The world is his, for these few hours. No voices sneering his name. No hands grabbing, pushing, tearing. Just the sky, endless and waiting.

The stars blink, cold and patient. The moon watches, unmoved. And yet—tonight, something feels different.

He stops in an empty parking lot, looking up. The silence here is thicker, stretched tight like the air before a storm. A shiver crawls up his spine. His breath comes slower. The wind shifts, carrying something with it—a sound, maybe. Or the absence of one. A presence, just beyond knowing.

He should leave.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he tilts his head back, eyes searching the black between the stars. And then—

A whisper. Not a voice, not really. A feeling. A pressure behind his ribs. A weight against his skin.

She is not yet a name. Not yet a shape. Just a thought curling at the edge of his mind, wrapping around his bones, settling into the hollow space he never knew how to fill... a love that he hadn’t known he’d been craving until now, but didn’t know how to receive yet.

He exhales, slow. And the night exhales with him.

He closes his eyes.

And listens.