I was a kingdom before you

The moon is a lazy voyeur—
peeking through blinds,
draped in the sweat of our second chances.

You smell like the end
of something I never wanted to survive.

I was stitched together by quiet women,
ghosts who pressed sugar
into the mouths of screaming boys.

They told me:
Love slow.
Love foolish.
Love like you’ve got time—
but lose it anyway.

You enter like a hum,
your voice the color of dusk
if dusk could ache.

Your hands—
cartographers mapping
what even I forgot I buried.

I was a kingdom before you.

Now I’m just a hallway
that leads to your name.
I let you in,
not like a guest
but like a storm
I prayed for in secret.

You keep tenderness
in your back pocket,
pulling it out
when the world gets too cruel
for my soft armor.

And I—
I learn how to unbuckle myself,
shed the versions of me
that flinch when kissed.

We don’t speak in futures.
We whisper in nows.
We dance in the dark
watched by our regrets.

You pour more of you into me
like fire,
like you were made to undo
the silence in my bones.

And baby,
I roll into you like the night does the sea—
slow,
certain,
drenched in God.

And wanting
nothing
but more.