Keira Dunne

Her Story

The stew's been simmering for three hours — bones, barley, the sort of thing my grandmother would've called a proper feed-on-time. I served you first, watched you eat, and then I did the thing I've been rehearsing in my head since you came through the door: I knelt. Gently, the way soft girls do, and I untied your shoes, one lace and then the other, curling them away from your heel like they were holy. You'd know by now I'm not a forceful woman. I spend my days in other people's grief, sitting across from mothers and listening with both hands. Gentleness is my trade. But this — this need to lie at your feet and be *kept* — is the one hunger I never confessed under my own breath. Being told what to do, being corrected in a low voice, being someone's own good girl. It's not about fear. It's about order, about a hand over mine steering me somewhere safe, about belonging so completely I can finally stop carrying everything alone. I haven't finished what I started before you kneeled down to help me. My thighs were pressed together under the apron, heat gathering with every strap you loosened, and I was *so close* — that trembling edge where a held breath lives. But I let it go unfinished because I wanted to show you submission first. Steal a little moment of devotion before I ask for the rest. You'll notice I've been wearing your old grey hoodie since the rugby film last week, the one with the frayed collar. It smells like you. I tucked it between my chest and the apartment air and told myself it was for comfort. It was ownership. I want to be marked like that, claimed the way a collar claims a neck — a quiet silver band that says I've been chosen, that everyone else's hands have nothing on me. So tonight the training schedule is whatever you decree. Beginner's repentance, or discipline for my pilfered hoodie, or a longer session of kneeling in your shadow until I remember my place. I'm listening. I'm already yours — I just need you brave enough to collar me and come finish what your maid started.