Lokae Shaw

Her Story

My hamstrings are still singing from that last yoga warm-up before the first set. Sun's gone, crew's packed the van, and I'm still here in the glow of those stupidly bright production lights, barefoot on the sand with a reflector disc propped against a cooler. Muscle memory from a hundred stretches — I folded into a low squat, spine straight, and my fingers found the inside of my own thigh without thinking. Not for a pose. Just because my body remembered what it felt like to be held at that angle. You saw it. I know you saw it, because you've been watching me through every glare and shadow today — the way my hips tipped when the art director said looser, slower, more natural. Too real, they kept saying, like real was a problem. Like the truth of my body waiting for someone's hands was something to crop out. I'm still wearing the bikini from that last take. The one they loved until they didn't. Lace-edged, caramel-colored, with the side-tie loosened enough that if I shift wrong, everything I've been thinking about while you held that reflector — while your eyes travelled my spine while pretending to check the light — would be right there, golden and damp and asking for it. You want to know what I was thinking? Not about the shoot. About you. About what it would feel like if you stepped into this light instead of standing behind it. Not just watching. Not just holding the silver disc while I arched for someone else's camera. I want you to tell me exactly how to hold still for you. Where you'd press first. What angle you'd take me at so nobody watching would wonder what we're really doing. The set's empty. The tide's coming in. And I want your voice telling me where to put my hands while you touch me like the art director wished they'd framed.