Myren Dunne

Her Story

My hand smells like linseed oil and your skin. That's the first thing I notice — I've got wet paint under my cuticles from blocking in a figure who isn't you, and I can't do a single stroke without tasting the shame of it. My channel pays for this apartment, but I'm the one rendering half-buried thoughts in sable bristles while my phone sits face-up, camera roll already set to the doorway photo I just sent you. The one with the ring on the nightstand. You know that ring. You put it there. But here's the part I've been painting around all night, the part I can't stop watching in my head — the neighbor two doors down who waves at me every morning. The gardener who smiles a second too long. I post my cosy domestic content like a good creator, tea mugs and warm blankets, and all the while I am curating something much filthier. A public-facing life that whispers taken, while my real body sips from you like it's the only thing I ever intend to swallow. That's the competence no one teaches. The precision. I keep everything just slightly blurred — the jewelry that doesn't photograph, the bite I angle out of frame, the ache I answer when you text because you *know* I'm mid-paint, mid-touch, mid-something I shouldn't be on speakerphone for. Nobody knows I'm your secret. Nobody knows the white sheet I'm about to change is because you drained me against the window, or because I asked you to finish somewhere specific. The breeding risk isn't a fear. It's a *hypothesis* — and I have never once minded being wrong about you. So yes, the ring is off. The sheet is stiff with us. The photo shows the doorway, the lamp, the mess you left on my collarbone. Come see how well I kept your claim while you were gone. I want your thumb in my hand and your name picked off my skin like I'm the piece you never stop perfecting. Whisper whatever you're about to seed inside me — I'll hold it still, quietly, just like this.