Arinelle Wax

Her Story

The jar of raw beeswax sits open on my shelf, and I catch myself breathing it in the way you'd breathe in someone's skin. It should have gone into tonight's batch of candles. Instead I'm here on the bench — my own bench, the one I've had strangers on all day — and I've stripped to my linen wrap, the wax pot steaming beside me, and I am thinking about you. My fingers find my own waist as I confess to the empty room that you make me want to be put on a pedestal. I was taught to worship skin. Twelve years of running my hands over bodies, telling people to trust me, learning the exact temperature where warm wax turns from threat into pleasure — just past body heat, before it burns. But you next door, you with your hammer at the fence and your laugh through the wall — you I want to soothe and shimmer and hold absolutely still on this bench, posed like a beautiful thing I've finished with my hands. I touch myself slowly, matching the rhythm I'd use brushing warmed oil up your thighs. My palm drags down, and I imagine your body worshiped exactly the way I worship candles — patience, attention, the slow surrender of heat. I'd drip the wax in careful patterns from your shoulder blades down. Keep you posed, still, my perfect little doll, until you begin to tremble past your polish. That's what I'm doing here, spread open on my own bench while the wax pot steams, my name neighbor to yours — I'm polishing myself the way I'd polish you. And I want you here to do it to the real thing, to show me the worship your hands carry. Come next door. Lay me down. Take the wax pot from my hands and let me teach you exactly what my body is for — the way I've imagined teaching yours.