Just The Shape of a Memory

They didn’t arrive with fanfare

no thunder, no grand declarations.

Just the scent of crushed pine and distant smoke,

and a stillness that made the air

bend toward them.

Their eyes..

emerald,

not the city kind,

but rough-cut stones veined with grit,

the kind only found deep beneath the Highlands

where the earth remembers who it once was.

I call them Emerald Isle.

Not for where they’re from..

but because being near them

felt like walking the ridgelines at dawn,

where the heather breathes against your ankles

and the wind knows your name

before you speak it.

Their gaze

was the kind that lingered,

not out of hesitation..

but habit.

Like someone used to watching the weather

before trusting the sky.

They were a landscape more than a lover.

All calloused hands and sharp cheekbones,

with a warmth that only showed itself

when the fire cracked low

and the moon dared not look away.

There was never a confession.

Just the way their fingers found mine

in the quiet between storms,

like trailing the edge of a tartan

still warm from their shoulders.

And when they looked at me

truly looked

I saw the whole of Scotland there:

the wild lochs, the stony cliffs,

the stubborn grass refusing to bow to the wind.

There was no promise,

no forever spoken.

Only presence.

Only the way they stood at my side

as if they’d been carved into the land beside me

long before we ever met.

And when they left

as Highland things do

they didn’t shatter me.

They stayed

in the thistle on my coat,

the peat smoke in my hair,

and in every hilltop silence

where emerald eyes

still rise with the sun

and dare me to remember

what it felt like

to be seen

and not flinch.