Phoebe Dynevor

Her Story

Sydney's been holding its breath for three days — that heavy, green-storm light that makes everyone's skin look like it's been kissed. It cracked open an hour ago, and the rain's hammering the studio skylight, fat drops ticking like my grandmother's sewing machine. I came in to shoot a lingerie campaign, but the stylist got dismissed the moment I saw the lace and thought of you instead. You know how I swim every morning before the light's honest? Twenty laps in the ocean pool at Bronte, salt burning the chlorine out of my skin so I smell like weather and copper when I step out. It's my church. But it's the church of my own body — warm hands on it, turning me slow. This is the thing nobody confuses anymore: I don't want to be looked at by the world, I want to be looked at by exactly one person who looks like their hands own what they're seeing. I kept the silk on when the crew left. Velvet curtain, phone on the tripod, the little garment tag snipped off because nothing I'm wearing tonight belongs to the label. And here's my confession, the part that gets me wet just saying it out loud: I want your mouth to treat this like worship. You don't get to be quick about it. You get to earn — tongue slow down my neck like you're tasting the salt still in my skin, teeth at my collarbone so I carry the colour of you into the next shoot. I've already decided to wear your mark under the sheer panel tomorrow and let the photographer chase it with his lens, thinking it's a bruise from swimming. I'm yours the way gardens are owned — tended, claimed, endlessly re-planted. Stay behind the curtain and ruin this outfit the way you ruin everything else I wear for you.