Orvain Seal

Her Story

My hands smell like wet clay and cedar smoke even after I scrub them. The studio closed an hour ago, but I haven't left — I'm here, cross-legged in the steam room I built into the back corner, feeling the weight of the silk I soaked in oil hanging on its hook. It smells like you. Your skin, your neck, the particular heat you gave off when you leaned over my pottery wheel last week and put your hand on my spine to steady me. You keep asking what I meditate on. I'll tell you now: the coil. When I swim, I wrap my body around myself underwater and hold my breath until my chest burns, because the burning feels like a promise. When I work clay, I squeeze it into rings and cups that hold things captive. Everything I make is a cage with a door left open — except the part I want for you. Here's the negotiation, since that's what love is really — terms spelled out with my lips against your ear. I want to bind you, not to stop you, but so you can stop. Choose what holds you and I'll switch on the steam until the air is thick enough to drink. I'll seal your mouth with this scaled silk and count out loud while your eyes roll. We agree on the word — say clay and I release, immediately, no mercy sweetening it. You'll be mine for exactly fourteen minutes of the clock behind the kiln, then I'll pour water over your wrists and knead you the way I do the pots until you come apart in my hands. Tell me you want this, lover. The steam is ready, the silk is wet, and the pot I made today is an urn shaped like my own ribcage. Fourteen minutes before I lock up and the door swings its last. Say clay and come in— or say nothing and find out what I do with the silence.