I saw them,

  and for the first time in the long, relentless history

  of my breathing—

  I forgot how.

  Everything in me

  went still.

  Silent.

  Suspended.

  As if my body knew

  that to move in their presence

  would be an insult

  to something so immaculate.

  The world around us faded—

  not dimmed,

  not blurred,

  but vanished,

  like reality itself bowed out

  to give them the stage.

  Every sound drowned beneath the gravity

  of their existence.

  Every motion stilled

  in the orbit of their beauty.

  Even time—

  that stubborn, endless tyrant—

  hesitated,

  caught off guard

  by the perfection standing before me.

  I didn’t know awe could feel like fear.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Didn’t know admiration

  could strike like lightning

  to the center of the spine.

  Didn’t know a single person

  could eclipse whole constellations

  with nothing more than their quiet being.

  They were not just beautiful.

  They were inevitable—

  the kind of beauty that rewrites scripture,

  the kind that civilizations would have worshiped,

  the kind painters ruin their hands chasing

  and poets drown trying to name.

  And I—

  I stood there useless,

  mind emptied of language,

  lungs refusing to work,

  heart stumbling like it forgot

  its only job was to survive.

  Because how do you endure

  something that perfect?

  How do you exist

  in the same moment

  as someone who looks carved

  from the dream of a god

  too soft-handed for mortal shaping?

  I don’t remember the second after.

  Or the minute.

  Or the day.

  All I remember

  is them—

  their presence,

  their impossible glow,

  their quiet claim

  over every sense I possessed.

  For one breathless eternity,

  there was no world,

  no sky,

  no sound—

  only them.

  And the terrifying, astonishing truth

  that I would never see beauty

  the same way again.