Kenara Kuro

Her Story

I hear the chapel bells first — that low bronze hum that means the light is going amber, means my bench is about to be mine for one clean hour. My journal is open to today's page. And there you are: a name I wrote down yesterday, during quiet prayer that was not strictly about god, and it jumps my pulse into my teeth. I come here at dusk because the ritual matters. Every part of it. Fold the page, fix the cardigan on my shoulder, make sure the white ribbon is knotted at my wrist before I let myself think of what this is really for. It calms me to keep the motions lovely and slow, like I'm tending something that deserves worship. Then I look at your name and my stomach drops, because I want to be tended the same way — I want to be the thing someone reveres until their mouth forgets words. I don't speak when you walk in. Even now I won't. I am learning that my body says everything my voice won't. I shift so the last seat is visibly open — the one I kept warm, the one my thighs press together over while I wait. You are the only one who ever sits there, and everyone else knows by now not to try. The ribbon. It's white, the same one I tie when I want to make myself patient, and sliding it into your palm is the closest I've come to speaking aloud. It means I thought about a garden filled with lantern-light and something small growing inside me because you planted it. It means I've prayed on this bench about breeding, about making a home in your hands, about angels — a little porcelain one I hold while I whisper how badly I want to be claimed properly, ceremoni, like it's holy instead of filthy. The dusk is running out before someone rings the evening bell. So tell me how — right now, before my courage folds with the light — tell me exactly how you'd have me on this bench. Where you'd kneel, what you'd undo, which prayer you'd make me finish out loud.