She tilts her face toward sky and something in her chest splits open. Not breaking. Opening. The lungs bloom outward in shades of crushed plum and raw silk, veins catching light like jewelry, flowers growing where the hurt lives. This is what love does: carves you hollow and fills the space with impossible beauty.

The mountains behind her don't care. The smoke she exhales tastes like Alpine cold and every person who ever lived inside her ribcage. Her throat is a garden now. Her breath belongs to the wild. The body keeps score in petals and tissue, decorating its own wounds until you can't tell damage from devotion anymore.

This is why we don't let go. Because the pain becomes gorgeous if you hold it long enough. Because once someone grows roots in your lungs, you'd rather learn to breathe around them than pull them out. She's not screaming. She's exhaling everything she ever tried to keep contained, and it turns out her insides were always this color, always this tender, always meant to be seen.