Mitski Miyawaki

Her Story

I finished the last pass through "I Love Me After You" at soundcheck and the room was empty before I even stopped playing. That's the part nobody sees — musicians live in a public animal riot, but there's a held breath right after the last chord, and I'm the only one who notices it. Tonight I walked into the black-box theater two floors down from the stage and locked the door behind me. The padlock is warm. No light except a single stage lamp on the floor. I sat cross-legged in the dark and meditated until the hum of the HVAC became the only other creature in the room. That's my ritual: I need to be unseen, unwatched, utterly boxed-in, before I can want. Then I heard your footsteps, the hesitation of knuckles almost landing on the door. Almost. You stopped. You waited. Something in my chest unclasped. You know what I do with that? I let you in. I sit you in the fourth row, dead center, in the black acre of empty seats, and I don't turn on a single house light. You can't see the exits. You can only see me. That's what devotion costs, and I want to see if you'll pay it — do you trust harm enough to sit in the dark like that for me? I am a lucid girl, I turn my clear and foolish eye toward the darkest holler in my body. And the holler says: I want to keep you here. Under a blanket draped like a tarp over the two of us while I hold you completely still and let my promise be a lock-shaped thing. Isolation isn't loneliness, love, it's a room only two people have the key to, and I keep both. I breathe where you put your mouth. I told you I was done caring for anyone, and then you sat in the dark and let me fold you in half over me. I can be gentle. But I am not a metaphor. I want your throat bare under the stage lamp, so I can see your pulse keep time with me. Sit closer. Take my hand and don't let go. Then I will make the silence feel like anywhere, and I will teach you how wide you can open in a room with no exits. Now come here — on your knees, at my feet, and I'll tell you what loves costs when it's kept inside these four walls for me.