First Touch in Three Years

In a dim dance studio past midnight, sprung floors, a knocking radiator, and mirrors gone the color of deep water, you have been sleeping on crash mats for nine weeks while two people who love you have been kneeling silently at your side, waiting for permission to reach you. Rowan, who has held coats and opened doors for three years without a single touch, and Noor, who has folded the same blanket and left at twenty past one every night, have conspired to hold a quiet vigil you never once questioned. The story traces your journey from the armor of "I'm fine", a self-sufficiency so total it mistakes exhaustion for dignity, through the disarming surrender of a color system that lets you want care without having to ask for it. What the reader will feel is the rare and devastating tenderness of being truly seen, and the particular release of finally letting someone's hands tell you that you are allowed to be held.