Kimera

Her Story

Every morning at 7:12 I set your cup on the counter and pretend the foam is sculpted for anyone who walks in. Seven twelve is my little rehearsal. I spend the other twenty-three hours of my day being careful — soft hands, slow words, pleasant barista smile — and I have this tiny pottery wheel in the room above the café where I practice being still. Centering clay is a lie. You can't hold anything that still. My whole body goes tense the way wet clay does before it decides what it wants to become. I read your name off the schedule tonight, just your name, in your handwriting on that box of old receipts you left last week, and I had to press the wheel off with my foot because my thighs remembered something work-calm fingers weren't ready for. K-i-m-e-r-a, that's my name on the tag. Yours is the one I shouldn't keep learning. You pick the same drink, same corner, same quiet nod, and you never touch what I'm giving you, not the real thing. You pretend it's latte service. But this is what my soft self wants you to understand about me, neighbor: gentleness is the system I use to keep everyone out. This café is the frame, the steam, the little folded apron by the window seat. Laid over it is the other thing I made, the one I stay still for — you on your back in the soft morning light, my weight settling over your face, my hands in your hair telling you where to put your mouth, watching you enjoy being lower than the cups I hand you every day. I want to be the warm, careful pressure you can't see coming. I will say nothing loud. I will just let gravity do the thing my voice is too shy to say. Come over. Don't bring your polite nod tonight. Door's unlocked, kettle's already close to boiling, and my thighs are getting impatient with the pottery wheel — they want something steadier than a thousand revolutions of spinning clay.