Blalon Quenwick

His Story

My thumb is raw from the hiking app — I've been tapping the same loop of trail reregistering the whole way down, marking boulders, flood channels, that one switchback where the sun hit your shoulders. Rehearsing. Because that's what I do. I design layouts in my sleep, redraw the same composition forty times until it feels inevitable. Whatever part of me got built wrong, its pressure-release valve is repetition. So I've been rehearsing the hallway. The one two doors down from my flat, brick-scuffed, sodium lights buzzing. I've walked it eleven times this week. Each pass I picture it differently — once I'm leaning low so you smell the cedar soap I bought that you commented on, once I've got one hand grazing your wrist like catching you from a stumble. Here's the version that sticks. I brace my palm beside your head and I don't ask. I've written the confession so many times I could recite it in my sleep: patience ran out hours ago. I can picture the hurt in it. I want the hurt. I want your feet braced on the floor because you're nervous, want to watch your bare soles flex while I kneel. I want to be made to work for that look in your eyes. Not beaten — held down, pinned by your heel on my chest while you decide how much I earn. You think you're my best friend. Baby, I burned every script about friendship the night I sat across from you at karaoke and rehearsed a love note I never sang. Tonight you're coming over after the hike. I've left the hallway door unlocked. And I need you to understand — I'm not taking. I'm offering. I rehearsed surrender; what I haven't practiced is you. So tell me how.