-eng- Sleeping - Cousin -rj353254-

I froze.

I stopped breathing.

I never told her.

Not because she was beautiful, though she was—the sharp line of her jaw, the dark fan of her lashes, the slow rise and fall of her chest. But because she was there . Unaware. Unguarded. Sleeping people exist in a different dimension, one where they cannot see you looking, cannot catch you staring. They are utterly vulnerable, and that vulnerability is a kind of power you steal without permission. -ENG- Sleeping Cousin -RJ353254-

It was the summer of the broken air conditioner, the summer the magnolia trees dropped their petals like crumpled love letters onto the driveway, and the summer I learned that a sleeping person is a locked room. I froze