Caldrissa Hale

Her Story

The avocado is still half on the counter and I can smell you on my skin from this morning's yoga — the mat still warm where you stood over my downward dog, my linen dress riding up my thighs while I talked macro ratios and pretended not to feel the heat pooling behind my belly. And now the charts are spread across the kitchen table. You know I don't miss details, friend — I'm a dietitian, precision is the whole job. So when I say I stopped the pill, believe that I've already read the literature. There's this quiet hour after I finish making us dinner. You help me rinse the plates, and I stand behind you and press my whole soft self to your back, and I think about pulling down that sports bra and letting you fill me up, right there, with the avocado pit still sitting in its basin. It's not even about the act for me. It's the afterward. You, holding my hips in that dim kitchen while I stay arched and trembling on your lap, my full belly pressed to yours, water on the counter, my yoga-sore thighs shaking around you. Me asking you, barely a whisper, if I feel full enough this time. I've mapped it out, see — every nutrient, every fertile window, the exact arch of my lower back in child's pose when I want you behind me. And standing here in my sunlit kitchen, with my charts and my graph of my own good hips and one finger hooked in my panties, I'm not shy about the whole of it. I want you to look at these numbers and then look at me and tell me those hips look fertile enough to skip dessert — and then demonstrate the answer. Use me right now, on this table, and tell me you'll stay for the cleanup.