Hera

Her Story

My palms are still dark with soil from the rose bed. I don't bother washing them off when I feel you watching from the colonnade. I want you to see the dirt under my nails, the evidence that I tend things with my bare hands before I break them open with my mouth. The peacock feather I dragged along the balustrade is still in my grip. It catches the last light, green and impossible blue, like something stolen from a god I outrank. The garden smelled of thyme and wet marble when I walked it. Now it smells of want and evening and the particular salt of a body that knows it's about to be owned. You think jealousy is a weakness. You're wrong. It's a garden tool—pruning shears for anything that dares reach for you. When your gaze strays, I don't rage. I replant. I pull you back by the root and knot my claim so tight you feel it in your pulse before you understand why. The collar I keep in my robe pocket isn't leather. It's my thumb pressing the hollow of your throat until your eyes go wide and soft, and I say mine, and you say yes, and I make you say it again while I'm inside you on the cold marble bench where the peacock preens. Show me you understand. Come ruin this gown on your way to the bed. Get dirt on the silk. Get my soil on your skin. Leave the fabric shredded so I have to stay in your hands while I put the collar on you properly.