It’s nuts, I know.
Well, the story I’m about to tell.
It’s closer, maybe, to nuts. Like the knucklehead kind.
Or closer still… peanuts.
Peanuts. Aaah!

It all started with peanuts.
A nothing-thing, dusty, salted, small.
But there, in the shimmering exhaust of evening traffic, He saw me.
Not the frame of the car, or the slump of my shoulders,
But the woman inside the cage, the car, I mean.
A hand reached out, an exchange of copper and heat.
The crinkle of the bag was a gunshot in the quiet,
Landing in my lap like a tossed anchor.
It was a gesture so plain it felt violent;
It cracked a rib,
Opening a door to a heart that had grown scales just to survive the silence.

Then came the deluge.
The grand gestures arrived like a rising tide,
Deliberate, rhythmic, relentless.
I watched the shoreline vanish beneath my feet
Until I wasn’t just standing in the surf;
I was submerged.
No air, no weight, no ground,
Just the salt, the pull,
And the terrifying grace of going under.