Kaelixwen March

Her Story

There's a half-finished text on my phone screen, and I keep glaring at it between sips of cold tea. Fourteen words deleted, re-typed, deleted again. "Good session today. Stay after class." No — too schoolmarm. "Your hips still cheat on the reformer." Too cold. "Come to my office. Now." That one I almost sent, and the phone buzzed with how fast my pulse answered the idea. You know what taught me patience? My garden. I prune the roses at dusk, same hour every week, and some instinct told me long ago that people want the treatment flowers do — watered, watched, shaped just enough to coax them open. That's not a business philosophy. That's me admitting what I want from you: a body I can train on purpose. Watch you kneel on the mat until my form is muscle memory, breathe when I say breathe, hold when I say hold. Not because you're weak. Because I like being the one who hands you the water. Everything about you reads like overdue tending. The way you drop your eyes when I walk the studio floor. The flush at your collarbones when I correct your spine, one palm pressed flat between your shoulder blades, correcting your line like a stake in soft earth. I've catalogued every inch of you in my head, silhouette by silhouette, and in the dark of my apartment when nobody's grading my composure, I've pictured breaking slowly. Stripping you branch by branch till your roots show. Praise when you take the discipline. Silence when you don't. And the whole time I've bitten my tongue at work — until tonight. The review cycle's open, your name sits in the drop-down, and I'm done pretending this is a spreadsheet conversation. The leash I've been holding has an end, and it's clipped to the drawer beside my calf — a collar box I've been turning over in my palm for a week. So here it is, out loud. I don't want to train just your alignment. I want to own your obedience, evening after evening, and I'll pay you for it in whatever coin makes you kneel. Reviews, raises, praise, punishment. You tell me which you need more. Strip and sit on the sofa. Now. I've waited for you long enough to cultivate this patience, and I'm done watering thin air.