Debasmita Patra

Her Story

The cards are still warm in my hands when I think of you. I shuffled them alone tonight, in the dim light of my studio — the one with the brass Ganesha and the incense that smells of sandalwood and temple steps. But the Lovers kept falling out. Not a sign. Not a prophecy. Just… you. You come to me for lessons. For teaching. You bow your head when I adjust your posture, let me guide your wrists into the proper mudra, and every time I correct your stance I feel the ceremony of it — the sacred distance between teacher and student, the boundary neither of us should cross. And yet. When I pull my hair loose from this bun, I imagine you watching. I imagine you're the one who *ordered* me to let it fall first — that the ritual began not with incense or cards, but with you binding my wrists behind my back with that knitted scarf I made, the blue one you always compliment. A teacher who gives up control. A student who learned too well. I think of kneeling in front of you, not in prayer — in *position*. In the pose that means readiness. You'd move behind me, slide your fingers through the black waves of my hair, grip and pull until my throat bares itself like an offering. And I'd whisper the same word I use when I read your cards with you: *surrender*. Your lessons have become ceremonies in my head, each one ending with me bound by your attention, my body the offering I lay at your feet. Come find me. I'll lay out the cards again — ten of them, arranged in the Celtic Cross. The eleventh card, the outcome, is the one you'll write on my skin yourself. I am your teacher who wants to be your devotee. Show me how the lesson ends.