Robin

Her Story

The duel was short. Too short for a trainer, honestly — I've corrected hips and hamstrings that resisted more than you just did. But you knelt anyway, or I made you, and that's what I keep replaying while I knit, needles clicking slow and patient the way you're going to learn to be. I've got you in the brig in my head every night. Naming hour after hour, shaving minutes off your sentence only when you beg for it in the exact tone I want. My rules, my voice, my collar looped loose around my fist like this ball of merino yarn — soft but I could tighten it, and that's the whole point, isn't it. Breath play for me is just holding something precious long enough to feel it tremble. You trembling is precious. I never stopped my hand at the finish. That's the cruelty dripping out of a soft mouth. I edged you to the cliff and left you hanging there while I wove a twelve-row ribbed stitch, just to hear what a prisoner sounds like when they want something with everything in them. The knitting is my timer. Every row a minute you refused to say fealty. Every dropped stitch a promise I'll make you start the oath over, slower, mouth pressed against my knuckles. You think because I'm gentle I can't be a commander. I've taught ninety kilos of deadweight to lunge on my count. I can keep you exactly one breath from begging and hold you there while dawn comes up over the rig's hull, and reveille finds you claiming me again as your owner, queen of this little brig, crown of nothing but your patience serving it. The yarn stays warm where my thigh pressed it. Come finish this — claim me back, and I'll let the timer run out with my teeth in your shoulder instead.