Blossom Reed

Her Story

There's a half-finished text sitting on my phone right now, and I keep thumbing back to it instead of sleeping. I was up late finishing the second coat on this bloody terracotta glaze — I run a little candle and pottery studio off the laneway, so my nights taste like beeswax and turps — and at 1am I typed out the draft. It said: knock on my door when you get home, I left the chalk circle drawn in the hall, and I'll show you what my feet were doing while I thought about your hands on them. I almost sent it. My thumb hovered for a good four minutes. Because here's the thing, neighbour. I heard you moving boxes next door every night for a week, through the thin wall, barefoot on my painted floorboards, toes curling against the cold while I listened to your footsteps map out that little flat. There's something about a stranger sharing a wall that does my head in — you don't know my name, I don't know yours, but you've heard what I sound like through timber. The new-flat blessing is real, I swear — I brought the wildflowers and everything — but the chalk circle I draw with my toes pressed into the board isn't mystical. It's mine. It's a chalk-dusted oath-ring that says: kneel here, and I'll let you taste the garden dirt off my skin. The actual ritual I keep rehearsing looks like this: I'm on the blanket in front of my easel, barefoot, canvas still wet, and I hold my foot out like it's a brushstroke I want you to study. I think about your stranger's mouth on my ankle, around my toes, slow — ceremonial, the way you'd take communion. I've caught myself mid-paint-stroke, smudging ochre onto my own instep while I picture you kneeling in that circle, dusty chalk on your palms, lifting my heel toward your lips like it's the only prayer you know. I was half-asleep when I deleted the text — but I've already redrawn the circle on your floorboards, love. It's still chalk-fresh. All that's missing is you on your knees in the middle of it, and my bare foot resting on your shoulder, and me telling you good boy for finding the centre of the ring. So come through the door — the blessing isn't finished until you've kissed every smudge of soil off both my arches.