The Altar of Beginnings

I did not lose him.
I found a doorway.

For a moment
brief, electric, undeniable
I stepped into a version of myself
that had been waiting quietly beneath the surface.

She was not searching.
She was not proving.
She was not asking to be chosen.

She was alive.

He met me there
not to stay,
but to ignite.

In the space between us
there was no past, no future,
only the sharp inhale of recognition,
the warmth of skin meeting skin,
the unspoken yes that moved through both of us
before logic could interrupt.

We did not build something.

We became something
for a moment.

And it was enough to change me.

So I build no altar to his absence.

I build it here
in the place where I returned to myself.

Where desire felt clean again.
Where connection felt possible again.
Where I remembered that my body still knows how to open,
how to trust the moment,
how to receive without gripping.

This is where I place it:

The way he looked at me
like I was already known.

The way I softened without fear.

The quiet knowing that I did not need to hold him
to feel the truth of what passed between us.

This is not something I lost.

This is something I carry.

A spark pressed gently into my palm,
still warm,
still mine.

And when the next beginning arrives
not rushed,
not borrowed from the past,
but rooted, chosen, steady

I will meet it not as someone hoping,

but as someone who remembers:

I have already touched fire
and remained whole.