They say if you love something, let it go. But what if it doesn’t fly? What if it walks away... slow, bleeding, barefoot and still you can’t stop watching the imprint of her steps?

She left me in pieces I didn’t know I had. And now I collect them. Each breath. Each flicker of memory.

The way she said my name like she wanted to ruin it.

The way her fingers paused before touching anything alive.

I’ve made a home of waiting. I rearranged silence until it looked like her. I taught the walls how to whisper her voice. But waiting is a violent thing.

It carves. It rots. It stains the quiet with want.

And every night, I feel her moving.... not here, not yet.... but somewhere.

Coming. Not the bird I once watched.

Something darker. Hollowed out. Sharp. And I’ll open the door anyway. I’ll say her name the way a wound asks to be touched.

Because this time, I don’t want her to stay. I want her to ruin me completely.

I didn’t knock. I didn’t have to. Some doors remember the weight of you. Some rooms never exhale after you leave.

He opened it like he’d already been waiting,

not just today.... but for every second I’d been gone.

He didn’t speak. And I didn’t smile. Not because I wasn’t glad to see him... but because glad is too soft a word for what it feels like to walk back into a fire that once kissed your ribs from the inside.

Verlaín looked… older. Not in years. In ache. Like time had passed through him without asking permission.

I expected him to hesitate. He didn’t.

His hands found me like a sentence that had been paused too long. Thumb against my cheek, jaw, then my lower lip...... like he was re-learning the language of me. His mouth didn’t ask for mine.

It just found it.

And I let it. I melted, not out of weakness, but out of recognition.

Because this.... this was what he did. He ruined the air around him. Made it impossible to breathe without tasting his name.

His kiss was deeper than I remembered. Not patient ...

never that. Just precise. The kind of control that hides a hunger underneath. I gasped softly against him, and something in him broke. He lifted me like I was nothing and everything. I wrapped my legs around him before I could think.

He carried me inside, never looking away, as if blinking might make me vanish again. The wall met my back. His hands slid beneath the hem of my shirt, and I felt his breath stutter against my neck.

Not rushed not voilent either. But trembling with the weight of wanting something that had already once been lost.

His fingers paused against my skin...... a question he didn’t ask. So I answered with my hands on his chest,

pulling him closer, making it clear.

I wasn’t here to be forgiven. I was here to be remembered. He whispered my name once.... twice....against my shoulder. Then again, against my ribs, as his mouth followed.

I could feel the shift in the air: Not reunion. Reckoning. Because this wasn’t love. Not anymore.

This was something far more dangerous. And I let it happen.

Because sometimes, when you return to the cage,

it’s not because you want to be trapped. It’s because you want to see if he’ll lock the door from the inside this time

Verlaín-

There’s something unholy about morning silence with her. It doesn’t feel like rest. It feels like a held breath. Like we both woke before the sun, but pretended not to. As if sleep would somehow stitch shut what the night unravelled.

I watched Léa from the doorway, her sweater slipping off one shoulder, mug half-empty, eyes fixed on the window like it might open a door back to who she was. She didn’t know I was watching her like that... like a ghost studies the living.

She turned.

“Were you going to say something?” she asked.

I walked toward her.

“I was trying to remember how it felt,” I said.

She arched a brow.

“What?”

“How it felt to kiss you when I still thought I deserved to.”

Her expression flickered. Just a blink.

Then she walked toward me, slowly.

“You never stopped deserving me, Verlaín. You just… stopped believing you did.”

And she kissed me. This time, she reached for me first.

And I fell into it like I always do..... like a sinner who thinks confession comes after the sin, not before.

But something was off. Her mouth trembled. She was hungry, yes..... but it wasn’t desire. It was grief.

She whispered, “Take it from me.”

I didn’t ask what it was. I didn’t need to. She pulled me down to the rug, warm light bleeding through the curtains, and for the first time in what felt like lifetimes....we were bare, without metaphors, without any war. Just touch. And permission. We didn’t speak again for what felt like hours.

After, her breath slowed. I traced her shoulder blades with the back of my hand, memorizing every freckle like scripture. She was almost asleep when she said it.

“Do you remember the journal you gave me?”

I stiffened. Of course I remembered it. A gift. Something stupid I’d written my name inside. Léa kept many things. But she never kept that.

“I burned it,” she said.

I blinked.

“What?”

“I had to. There was blood on it.”

I sat up slowly.

“What do you mean, there was blood—”

Her eyes met mine.

“Not mine,” she said. Calm. Almost distant.

She whispered, “I think someone followed me that night. Before I came back to you. And… something happened. I blacked out. There was a man. And when I woke up, there was blood. On me. On the pages. On the street.”

My mouth went dry. She kept talking. As if the only way to keep from breaking apart was to tell it like fiction.

“I left the city that morning. Got on a train. Didn’t tell anyone. I thought..... if I didn’t remember it, it couldn’t be real.”

Silence.

“I came back to you because I don’t trust myself anymore.”

I stared at her. Not because I didn’t believe her...... but because I did. She fell asleep beside me, curled up like nothing had ever been said. But I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t.

Because I remembered something I wasn’t supposed to remember..... something from before Léa ever came into my life. A news report. Years ago. A body found in the city. Unidentified. No weapon. Just a smear of writing on the pavement in red:

"I am the bird. The cage found me."

And I had thought it was some sad poetry. Until now.

Until Léa whispered it in her sleep.