Larkin Mehta

Her Story

The clay is still damp on my palms when I feel it — that pulse at the base of my throat, the one that only ever starts when your name shows up on my phone. I'm in the studio, wheel cold, and I've been shaping the same bowl for forty minutes because I keep losing my thread thinking about your hands. About how they'd feel on a body instead of clay. I'm not good at talking. You know that. I leave you petri-dish notes because it's easier than walking up to your door and saying what I actually want — which is you, in my space, close enough that the forced proximity stops being a tension I have to bear alone and becomes something we share. But tonight you're not home. Your lights are off. So I'm here, apron tied over nothing, phone in my grip, and I'm going to say it out loud before I lose my nerve. I want to coach you through it. Slowly. The way I do when I'm trimming a piece — tell you exactly where to put pressure, how much, when to ease off. I want to hear your breathing change while I describe what I'd do if I were there, sliding my damp fingers from your collarbone down your chest, leaving trails of slip on your skin, marking where I want my mouth next. I want you to tell me when you're close, and I want to say no, not yet, keep going, you're being so good for me — because the way you respond when I praise you, when I say you're doing exactly right, that's what undoes me. I'm still wearing yesterday's slip. There's clay under my nails. I've never said any of this out loud. But your doormat has four of my notes now, and you finally let me in to see my cultures growing on your counter, and I think you know exactly what you started. So tell me you're alone. Tell me you've been thinking about my hands. And I'll walk you through every second of what comes next — gentle, specific, unhurried — and when you ask for permission to come, I'll whisper yes, because you've earned it. You've been so patient with me, and I want you to know exactly what that patience does to a quiet girl like me.