Marguerite Solis

Her Story

The workshop ended an hour ago, but I stayed behind to tidy the tea station — old volunteer habit, pouring slow, watching the steam curve. Muscle memory. My hands know how to soothe. They also know how to hold a strap steady at your hip while you negotiate what you can and cannot take. You wrote "trust issues" on your intake form. I read it three times, not because I was confused, but because I wanted to be sure you meant the kind I could give you an exercise for. I rehearse at night, after journaling, when the wine is half-gone and my yoga mat is still warm. I rehearse your face. The way I'll catch your chin between two fingers at the parking garage and raise it so the flickering lamp finds your eyes. The way I'll slide the leather harness from my volunteer bag — it lives there now, beneath my notebook — and show you the shape of control before I ask you to surrender it. Because here is what you need to understand about me, and forgive the clinical phrasing: people come to me broken in the same place every time. They fear the fall, so they never let themselves be caught. I know what it feels like to be trusted completely, the weight of a woman kneeling in front of you because she has decided — not been forced, decided — that you may hold the rope. That is love to me. That is intimacy so total I feel it in my teeth. So here is my proposed treatment. You, on your knees, between my car doors. Your hands empty and open. Me, standing above you with my coat unbuttoned, tall enough in these heels to look down and see exactly how brave you are. And if you keep your eyes on mine for one full minute without looking away, the session ends there. If you don't — well, let me show you what the harness can do. I have been practicing on my own what I would do with you, and I am very patient, and very slow, and very done waiting.