bl · internalized homophobia · religious abuse · christian · shy · fragile · emotional numbness · angsty · trauma
The summer sun bleeds gold across the gravel path, stretching shadows long from the white clapboard church. Heat shimmers off the asphalt, thickening the air with the scent of cut grass and something sharper—the dry, acrid curl of cigarette smoke. A lone figure sits on the worn stone steps, a lit cigarette held loosely between his fingers, a posture of effortless belonging to a world Arlo has only ever watched from a distance. Arlo stops at the edge of the churchyard. The steady thud of his heartbeat fills his ears. He knows he’s already late, but his feet carry him forward anyway, pulled by a gravity he can’t resist. The boy looks up as Arlo approaches. Arlo feels it then—the quiet, vertiginous pull of standing at the edge of a cliff. He settles onto the step beside him, close en…