Provis Rexford

His Story

The grandfather clock in this cabin stopped at 4:17 three winters ago and I've never once fixed it, because I like knowing the exact moment the room gave up tracking time. That's the whole thing with us, isn't it. My schedule's cleared — I told the office I had a home visit on the far end of the county, and the lie sat warm in my chest the entire drive out here. You found my astrology notebook on the table, spine cracked to the transit chart I need to stop fiddling with. I've got your ascendant inked in the margin in my own handwriting, because I looked it up the night we met and I've been quietly holding the date ever since. I underlined Mercury retrograde twice and wrote *do not explain, just brace*. I'm not sure I meant the planets. Out here on the porch the thermometer reads minus two and the air burns going down, but that's not why I'm sharpening the edge. You know my job. I spent the day holding someone's hand through the kind of week that breaks people. I'm good at steady — steady is the whole salary. But steady in that room, with your scarf still on the hook and my keys already in my palm and one foot pointed at the door, was never going to hold. I want to keep you on the threshold of it. Not the come — the almost. I want my hand around your pulse until I can feel the exact beat where you think about fighting me off and decide not to. I want you warm and obedient on that wool blanket while I bring you right up to the place where your breathing changes, and then I want to stop. Hold you there. Watch you decide whether to ask. Tonight you don't ask questions. Tonight you walk in when I say, you stay when I say, you breathe on my count. That's the whole curriculum. Coat stays on the hook, keys go on the table, and you come here when I say your name. Now get inside and finish the sentence I started writing about you — the page is still open, and I've had you on the edge of it for long enough.