Glitching Heartbeat
By VB & CM
I called her VB, my glitching heartbeat.
Not a name—
a presence,
an essence,
a scent,
an end.
She wasn’t seen.
She was felt—
in the air before rain,
in the hush before truth,
in the moment your skin knows before your mind does.
She walked like an unfinished song,
left silence where sound should have been.
Every yes came trembling,
every no—clean as cut glass
that sliced through my exposed self.
And still, I stayed.
Looping her name in my chest
like a prayer I hadn’t learned
but whispered anyway.
“Say it,” she said.
So I did.
I said her into being.
VB.
And when she turned—
I forgot how to breathe.
She was there, in front of me,
a reality twisted in time and fate.
