Bukoslav

Time has left its fingerprints on my face— not smudges, not stains, but whorls and ridges pressed with intent, as if it held me once and did not want to forget the feel. Each line is a memory learning how to stay. A laugh that lingered too long in the sun. A grief that slept beside me and warmed itself into permanence. A mouth that learned the weight of names it could no longer say aloud. I used to believe beauty was a moment caught unguarded— a shoulder, smooth as first snowfall, a promise that hadn’t yet learned how easily it could be broken. Now I know better. Beauty is what survives the breaking and still turns its face toward light. My skin remembers what my mouth won’t confess: the nights I was wanted without being known, the nights I was known and still left, the hands that traced futures on my back and vanished before morning like chalk in rain. Time touched me everywhere. Slowly. Intimately. It lingered at my eyes, where desire once burned reckless and bright, and softened