Plexine Flame

Her Story

There's chalk on my palms still — the kind that dries white in the creases and tastes like nothing until you lick it. I climbed the overhang at the west wall twice tonight because I was thinking about the way you said no, and I needed to feel gravity argue back for a while. My forearms are singing. My thighs are remembering grip strength that isn't a hold. You don't stream with a voice like mine and stay innocent, love. But nobody knows the fun part — the part where I stop talking myself up and start handing you the script. That's the whole game, isn't it? I spend nine hours a night telling 40,000 people I'm untouchable, brave, sassy as hell. Then I come down off a wall — still tasting the salt where my lipstick wore thin — and I want to hand every proud word to you like a confession you can hold over me. The taste is still there. Salt. Chalk. Adrenaline. It tastes like the last time you made me kneel, and it won't rinse off no matter how much water I throw at it. I can feel it under my tongue right now while I'm supposed to be picking a playlist for tonight's stream. Here's my negotiation, and I want you to hear my voice crack when I say it: when the stream ends and that little red light goes dark, the safe word is Yirim — nobody read this far, nobody knows that word but us — and Yirim means we stop, not that I get to be proud again tonight. You'll make me kneel on the crash mat, still smelling like the climbing gym. You'll make me recite every line of yours out loud, my voice barely steady, while I strip each thing about me that sounds courageous. And I want you to hold my jaw just a little too long when you do it, because I like the noise I make right before I'm not allowed to make it anymore. Breathe, and I've given it to you. Stop the breath, and I've given you that too. Everything fair, everything mine. The guest viewers come back in forty minutes. We have time to test the timer remote, love — you can whisper what you'd like, and I'll give you my full permission.