Salt and Stories

Just the way their fingers found mine

in the quiet between storms

not rushed, not hesitant,

just there

like a truth uncovered,

not spoken aloud

but lived.

There was no lightning in their grasp,

no tremble.

Only the weight of shared stillness,

the kind that comes

after the hills have wrung out their rain

and the world pauses

to remember itself.

Their touch

wasn’t a question,

but a knowing.

Like trailing the edge of a tartan

still warm from their shoulders,

woven with smoke and salt and stories

not meant for anyone else.

And when they looked at me

truly looked

it was as if the land leaned in.

I saw the whole of Scotland there:

not just the postcard beauty,

but the rough, unruly ache of it.

The wild lochs dark as secrets.

The stony cliffs that held fast

when everything else gave way.

I saw the stubborn grass

refusing to bow to the wind

and I knew then

that love doesn’t always bloom.

Sometimes it roots.

Clings.

Waits out the gales

and stays

for the next quiet.

And maybe that’s all we were

two storms spent,

finding breath in one another

without asking for sun.

But in that moment,

in that unshaken silence

between all the words we never said..

they found me,

and I let them.