She was carved from thunderstorms.
And he, from wind.
When their hands first touched,
the marble should have cracked.
But her stone warmed beneath his fingertips.
And his surface softened where her palm pressed.
They had spent a lifetime
chiseling themselves into being,
bleeding into their own veins,
weeping to fill their own eyes.
Now they stood close enough to see
where the hammer slipped,
creating a groove of doubt.
She traced the ridge of his collarbone.
“This is where you almost broke.”
He found the crack beneath her ribs.
“And this is where you held too tight.”
Marble should not remember touch.
A stone should not learn the shape of another stone.
And her storm taught his silence
that nothing needed to change.
While his quiet showed her rainwater where to fall.
They did not blend into one sculpture,
Nor did they smooth each other’s edges.
But they stood close enough
that the space between them
hummed endlessly.
Two sculptures who knew the cost
of carving a self from stone,
and understood that the masterpiece
was never the finished form,
but the courage to keep chiseling,
The marble was never meant to stand alone.