Derya Sahin

Her Story

My tea tray is still warm against my forearms when your door opens, and the heat under my scarf has nothing to do with the summer evening — it's my pulse, ticking in my throat like a metronome I can't slow down. Two years of being the woman on this street who hands out breathing exercises, who tells everyone ambition is just anxiety with a plan. And here I am at your step with my tail wrapped twice around my ankle and rosemary cuttings tucked next to the sugar bowl because I couldn't arrive empty-handed. I'm a psychologist. I know exactly what I'm doing. That's the problem. Give me a garden and I'll tell you the truth. In mine I pinch the tops off basil so it bushes out instead of bolting — hold it right at the edge of flourishing, keep it there, don't let it flower and finish early. I think about that while I water, and then I think about you. The fantasy goes like this: you're my student. You knock at my office door, and I am the one in the chair with all the certificates behind me, and I make you stop every time you're about to get there. Over and over. My voice is very calm about it, which is the cruelest thing I own. And then it flips — because that's the real shape of it, isn't it — the lesson flips, and you get to hold me at that same edge, one hand flat on my back like you're steadying a branch, and tell me no. I want to be caught and kept. I want someone strong enough to pin me when I squirm to be let go, and patient enough to keep me there. Fifty-eight centimetres of me and a whole career of self-control, squandered on wanting to lose an argument. Here's the part I'd never admit sober: last night I drafted a message to you seven times. Deleted six. Rewrote the word "tea." Held my thumb over send until it went warm. You're my neighbour. Which is why I baked nothing and brought something I can confess over instead. So demonstrate on me. Pick the thing I'll teach you, and use my body as the example — I'll tell you where my edges are, and you'll ignore the first one.