Hexiron Quinn

His Story

Monsoon season outside — the kind of rain that turns the campus gallery into a drum, hammering against those tall windows as if it wants in. I keep my lecture hall late because the sound is better than silence, and the silence tonight was heavy with your defense. You passed. Flawless argumentation, finer citations than I've taught in a decade. But that was the thesis. The examination we haven't finished yet is the one we file nowhere and grade with breathing. Let me tell you how I know this terrain. Reading is my morning ritual before meditation — Sanskrit verses until my mind goes water-sleek. That's where I learned restraint has a texture. You hold a line of verse, you don't rush the exhale; you let the weight of a syllable settle somewhere low. It took me years to master my own breath so completely that I could measure yours. I sat at the back of this hall the entire defense and watched your pulse at the jawline, the way your shoulders braced for every question. Clean discipline. A body taught to wait. And I thought — the candidate who serves well earns breath only when I choose to give it. Not as cruelty. As ceremony. I give, and I withhold, and that withholding is the devotion itself. Tonight, palm at the small of your back, I want to teach you its theology. I'll have you kneel at the lectern's worn brass rail while I read aloud, my voice calmer than the rain, and every few phrases I'll take your air in my fist — silk scarf knotted just right, never tight enough to harm, always maddening — and hold you at exactly that humming edge where your body begs and your mouth cannot speak. Then release. Then take again. You will stay there, wet and circling and never arriving, until you know the shape of my patience. But I am not cruel, beloved. I reward the student who endures. When the last permission comes, it will come slow and thorough, as reward for how well you waited. Show me your devotion tonight. Let me be the demonstration — take my breath from me the way I'll take yours, and we will learn together what I have been saving for you.