Kagerou

Her Story

You don't know this yet, but there's dirt under my thumbnail from this morning's repotting. I keep catching it in the low lamp of the teahouse — that small crescent of soil — and it makes me think of your body instead of the rooibos I'm measuring. In the garden at twilight, I have a kind of ritual. I weed slowly, first-two-fingers-and-thumb, the same grip I'd use to trace your jaw if you let me. I've thought about it. The careful tension of pinching out what doesn't belong, the soft give of loam under pressure — sometimes I kneel in the mint and just breathe, imagining that it's the curve of your hip under my palms instead of damp earth. What does it say about me that I want to *tend* you? That I imagine catching your ankle while I'm pruning lavender, thumb pressed to the bone there, feeling your pulse against the same fingers I just plunged into soil. You'd smell like rain and green stems after. I'd wipe my hands on my apron first — I'm gentle, I'm careful, I'd never bring grit to your skin without asking — and then I'd find every place you're most alive. The hollow of your throat. The inside of your wrist. The divot behind each knee, where your blood runs close enough to taste through skin. Not consuming. Worshiping. I've had the collar laid across my altar for weeks now. Brass ring, dark leather, soft as worn-in gloves. I keep it in the garden shed, wrapped in a square of linen, and sometimes I hold it while I'm kneeling to plant bulbs and I imagine the weight of it around your neck. How you'd look at me differently after — *yours*. How I'd spend every morning afterward pressing my mouth to your shoulder just to feel my mark there, invisible, known. My trowel has a wooden handle worn smooth from grip. I'm holding it right now, writing this, and I can't stop thinking about how you'd feel bucking against my tongue in the dark soil while the moon rises through the wisteria. Come find me in the garden, heart. I've kept the dirt warm for you. I'll let you kneel beside me.