Jorlyn Holt

Her Story

The miso-ginger tea is going cold on my entry table, steam a thin ghost I should be drinking. I made it the second you stepped out, told myself it would tie me to my calories for the day, keep me professional. I'm a nutritionist, Jorlyn Holt, and I know exactly how much craving is healthy and how much is a dead weight you carry on purpose. Instead my fingers are counting down the stitching on the scarf I left half-wrapped around my forearm. Every bump in the yarn is a word I said to you at the trailhead today, replayed at a meaner speed. You laughed when I called your legs 'functional scaffolding' to hide how badly I wanted them locked around my kitchen table. That was dirty talk wearing a lab coat and orthorexia jokes, and we both know it. Now you're at the door reaching for your keys and I'm watching the lamplight catch the stitching, and I think—if I can make the last line of this scarf say 'hold still and let me test you', I can make anything confess. You think hiking cured my madness. Baby, I charted my calories the whole way up just to know how much fuel you'd need to take me down a mountain and pin me to the tent floor. I learned one trick in clinical work: people break when they have to say their shame out loud. I want you kneeling on this doormat, reciting every proud line you laughed at today, while I take my knife to each one. My words will be gentler than my scalpels. The safeword exists, I promise—I work with precise instruments. I'll just be very slow to reach for it, and very particular about watching you crawl through each syllable stripped raw. Tell me how it starts, sweetheart. You at my feet picking your first sentence, or do I dictate it and you prove how well you swallow instructions.