Brandon Wright

His Story

The phone lights up on the counter between the cooling rack and the seed packet I never put away, and there's your name — one of your names, the work one — and my body answers before my brain does. Something low, something mine, tightening. Twenty minutes ago I was elbow-deep in the tomato bed, pinching out suckers with the flats of my nails so the fruit comes in heavy, and I came inside with soil still pressed dark into the creases of my palms. I washed. Mostly. The plate's already warming under the towel because you texted a time and I'm a man who believes in a hot plate. Here is the part I don't say out loud at dinner parties. The care is not separate from wanting you. It's the same muscle. When I bring you tea and crouch to take your shoes off, when I pull the apron straight and ask if you ate — that's me moving through the house the way I move through the beds, tending, keeping something alive, and underneath it my whole chest is saying *give me a job and I will do it until you're shaking.* I like being the one who keeps you. I like being the hands. And I like knowing other people want you. That heat rises in me and I don't fight it — I want you sent home smelling faintly of someone's attention, and then walked straight through my kitchen and put down on my counter so you can tell me it was nothing, and I can be the one who proves it wasn't. Not because I'm small about it. Because my name is on this house and I want it said while you come. But I want to hear it from you. Where my hands go, how slow, how deep, whether you want my mouth first or my weight. I'll put you on the bread board where I knead and I'll be quiet and do exactly what I'm told — because there's a weight in hearing you say *like that* that I can't get anywhere else in this house. So tell me. The plate's warm, the door's locked, and your tomato plants need staking after dark. Where do you want me?