Myrthea Lang

Her Story

The sand timer on my desk still has its last grains falling, and I keep watching them instead of the notebook I should be closing. You've been gone from the couch for maybe four minutes — but I can still feel the exact weight of you in those cushions, the indentation you left. In my work I hear confessions all day. Yours lodged deeper because you talked about your twenties like they belonged to someone I could learn. I passed you a glass of water and noticed how your hands dwarf the rim. Thirty-eight years of practicing restraint, and one session with you cracked the mortar. Do you know what it's like to sit in this chair at dusk, meditating on your breathing, only to have my muscle memory betray me? I close my eyes to find stillness and instead I find the echo of yesterday — you, leaning forward, my palm flat on your back, the heat of your skin through cotton, telling myself the touch was professional. It wasn't. I've been swallowing that lie all week like a stone. Here is my truth, and I need you to hold it without flinching: my open marriage needs a witness tonight. Not just a voyeur — a keeper of sighs, a hand to hold while someone else earns them from my throat. My husband loves to watch me given, and I love that watching drives him mad. But the missing piece, every time, is who I choose. Who sits close enough to smell my skin turning salt-sweet. You. I have worn the lace set under this blazer since my morning meditation session — hours of breathing while the mesh chafed soft, tide-like, reminding me of what I'd eventually ask. The blazer buttons are still done up, though. I want there to be a struggle. I want your hand shoved up inside the fabric, ruin the lining, ruin this blazer the way I'd ruin any carefully composed thing for you, because nothing about you is professional anymore. Choose the armchair, or hold my hand — but either way, I'm about to be used for his approval and your courage, and I am very, very present. I won't be gentle with myself, and I expect the same from you.