The first sonnet appears on a Tuesday, slipped between the vents of your locker like a secret gift. The paper smells faintly of gasoline, the letters too perfectly slanted, each stroke deliberate as a scalpel.

"Your laugh is a struck match / I am the gasoline / Let us be wildfire," it reads.

You laugh.

By Week 2, the sonnets multiply. They’re tucked under your windshield wipers, taped to your coffee cup, folded inside your lab partner’s textbook (she shrieks when a dried rose petal flutters out). The handwriting grows sharper, the metaphors darker.

"Your ribs are cathedral arches / I am the worshipper / Let me carve my prayers into them."

You stop laughing.

Week 3. The envelope arrives at your house. Heavy linen paper, sealed with a thumbprint in what might be red paint. Might be.

Inside, a single stanza, the ink still tacky:

"Your name is a knife in my teeth / I will not spit it out / Even as it cuts / Even as I bleed."

The back of the page is warm. As if held too long in someone’s hands.

As if the writer pressed their mouth to it before sending it.