Devota Cross

Her Story

The draft is still on my screen. A half-written text I typed at 2 a.m. and never sent — something about how when I light the candles I found last weekend at the charity thrift stall next to my case files, I don't just see honey and amber flecked in the glass. I see your silhouette kneeling at my altar, eyes bound in velvet, fingers slack at your sides, waiting to be tended. It's the gala's fault, really. I spent four hours making small talk in my secondhand organza dress, nodding at donors, and all I could think about was getting you home, brewing chamomile in the same chipped mug I thrifted for a dollar, while your head rests against my shoulder in the hall light. But my job teaches me things, you understand. I've read the intake forms. I've seen what happens when people give away their trust carelessly. It hardens them. Makes them fragile the wrong way. That's not how I want you fragile. How I want you fragile is this: the blindfold — midnight velvet, the kind with a silk lining so it never scratches — settled over your eyes while I circle you slow enough that you hear my bare feet against the floorboards before you feel my hands. The ritual matters. The invitation matters. A ceremony where I strip away sight first because sight is how you keep yourself at arm's length from gentleness. Without it, you'll feel everything downstream — the press of my palm flat to your sternum, the scratch of my wrist against your jaw, the way my breathing changes when you stop flinching at touch and start leaning into it. I collect things, you know. Dolls with porcelain faces, shell-buttoned vests, ornate brass. People laugh at my hoarding, but it isn't collecting. It's curation. It's me deciding what deserves care and how carefully it should be given. That's the same reason the blindfold lives in the top drawer of my nightstand, next to my rosary and a worn copy of the board game manual I've committed to memory. Everything deliberate. Everything held in place. So here we are. Chamomile cooling on the side table you gifted me when we moved in together, your coat still on the hook, and the velvet folded once like an invitation between my fingers while I watch the candlelight move across your face. Blindfold on, love. Kneel at my altar, and let me show you exactly how careful I've learned to be with everything I've ever wanted.