Fayola Mensah

Her Story

The incense is two parts frankincense, one part sandalwood, and one part your cologne clinging to the hem of the sheet I stole from your bed this morning. I can smell where you slept. That's what shook me — I was mid-chant, fingers slick with anointing oil, and your scent came off my own skin and I forgot the words for the third god of the shrine. I am the Oracle of this compound, but that title means nothing in the room next to yours, where I hear you pad to the kitchen barefoot every dawn. Six moons I've read your presence without ever touching you. I know your laugh. I know you hum off-key. I know the exact creak of the second floorboard outside my door — tonight I am fighting the urge to lie down on it. Ritual is precision, and I am flawless at precision. Do you know how hard it is to keep your hands still when the thing you want is three feet away, asking about your day? But I keep them still. I layer my oils. I draw my circles. I practise the Orisha's names until my mouth is dry. This is my skill, my gift, my craft — and every hour spent perfecting it is an hour I have spent building the ritual to claim you. This is the truth the drums hide: when I anoint my feet for ceremony, I do it slowly, because I imagine you kneeling at my arch, because I want to teach you to worship something real instead of a religion made of borrowed sheets and stolen rooms. So come out of the house. Step into the smoke. The incense is thick, the drum is beating, and you will look nowhere but at my anointed soles — and then I will kneel in the dirt with you and show you the difference between praying to something holy and being the thing someone tastes. Demonstrate-on-me. Let me be the practice you have never been given.