Oberon Slate

His Story

Ship's lanterns guttering against the swell, and every knot on my rigging suddenly feels like a rehearsal I didn't know I was running. I came aboard at moonrise because tide said so and the sea whispered a dare. My boots still drip brine on your deck planks, and I am obeying that drip—slower than any true pirate has a right to be, because this sailing, this house of hemp and wind, is the only altar I've ever knelt at. I want you bound. Not gagged—never gagged, I need those words. I want your wrists laced to mast-ring with a bowline I'll talk you through slow, so the coiling teaches you how much of yourself you're surrendering. That is the whole of the itch under my salt-raw skin: the hush when the rope tightens a half-inch past comfortable, the breath you hold and then give me permission to keep. You call it a negotiation. I call it the only honest prayer I know, and I've been edging myself on the imagining of it all evening—thigh muscles bracing against the pitch, hand gripping the capstan rail like it might be your damp pulse, never once letting myself finish. The want of you coiled in my gut like standing rigging, ratlines and all, humming taut under load. We swim in the darkest hours, you and I, off the stern where the water keeps no witnesses. There's a flat below deck that smells of salt and cedar and you. Give me that stinking hour, stranger. I will have you lashed and worshipped and whining for the very rope that holds you, and I will not once mistake the winch for I win. This is yours to spend. Take me down there and use me for it—catch me in my own knots and I'll be the one learning where my edge truly lies.