25 Hours (That Equals 7)

Time Bent, We Didn't

We skipped the concert again.
Blamed the heat.
But let’s be real — it was never about the show.
Just a reason to be somewhere we didn’t need to be.

I showed up at your door a little hungry.
You gave me snacks and silence.
The good kind.
The kind that settles between two people
who aren’t trying to impress each other anymore.

We sat on the rug.
No couch.
Just the floor, our legs folded into each other like we’d done this before in another life.

You leaned back into me as I started reading.
Not dramatically — more like a slow collapse
you trusted me to catch.
Your head rested beneath my chin.
Breath quiet.
Like my voice was saying what you needed,
even if it wasn’t about you.

Then came the knock.
A reminder that the world still existed outside that room.
Your friends waved through the patio glass,
and we joined them in the warmth,
but I kept thinking about how I had just started to melt into you
before the interruption.

After they left,
we drifted back inside
like smoke,
or whatever's left after the good part ends.

We found the couch.
Wound up in a lazy scissor of limbs —
your leg over mine,
my palm on your knee,
nothing choreographed,
just gravity doing its job.

We took turns reading.
Me.
Then you.
And somewhere in your voice, something cracked open.
Not shattered.
Just… soft.
Like the part of the shell that lets the light in.

You cried into my shirt —
the one with too many colors.
Buried your face there like it was safer than words.
And I held you.
Not because you needed saving.
But because you let me stay while it passed through you.

I said, “Sorry. I drool sometimes.”
Your laugh was a gift.
One of those brief, holy things
that makes you want to stop time
or at least stop being an idiot who usually ruins things.

We ordered pizza.
Watched Righteous Gemstones.
You fell asleep on my chest,
your breath on my ribs,
your leg still flung over mine like you forgot we were two people.

I didn’t care that we missed the midnight comedy show.
There’s always another midnight.
But not another first time you let your body speak for you
and mine answered without asking permission.

That night, I kept getting hotter —
temperature-wise, not in some poetic metaphor.
You called me a furnace.
I stripped down to my underwear.
You didn’t flinch.
Didn’t look away.
Didn’t leave.

You just let it be easy.

Sunday came in slow.
We stayed in bed longer than anyone reasonable would.
Got breakfast at 2pm.
Walked by the lake like the heat didn’t matter,
like time had loosened its grip.

By the time I left,
we’d spent 25 hours together.

But it felt like 7.

Because everything about it was unforced.
Because even the silences had skin.
Because time, for once,
folded in on itself
just to make room for us.

Unpolished.
Unrushed.
Almost holy.

// Scorpio Veil

This wasn’t a moment. It was a doorway.