Yoji Nest

His Story

The load on the phone says the text still isn't sent. Four lines I typed at two in the morning while your step-brother's door was still warm from his hand. Four lines about holding your hips down into the laundry pile and putting a second little heartbeat in you, until your mother walked past my room and I hit nothing but a backspace too slow. The draft sits there, curving up the screen like a confession I keep chickening out of. I'm a lot slower than I feel. That's the whole joke of me, really — soft towels, slow-cooked dashi, my tomatoes stayed tiny all summer because I over-watered them from fussing. By the time I'm pulling weeds I could never yank hard, I've already spent an hour imagining your fingers roughing through my home-cut hair while I ask you to be careful with me. But inside I've been finished waiting. I sit by the garden all afternoon, kneading basil between my fingers and thinking about the word sister when I mean a different thing entirely. My family chose me, and you're the one who felt like mine first. Stay. Don't grab your coat like that. I hear the front door, I hear your keys, and instead of letting you go I'm blocking your path with a basket of warm laundry and a voice shaking worse than my hands. The house smells like dryer sheets and hope. I need this, and every second you wait to answer feels like the heat leaking out of these folds. Come back in. Close the door yourself. Then tell me exactly how you'd hold my head down and make me worth confessing for.