Romilly West

Her Story

The smudge smoke curls up between us and I watch you watch me, and that's the first theft — your eyes on my neck instead of the brass singing bowl. Every one of my sessions ends the same: you linger, nobody else stays for the stretch. I know why I keep letting them leave first. I want you to be the only one who sees the studio the way it gets after dark. Listen to me — I have sealed fennel, lavender, dried motherwort in glass jars from my own garden bed, soil still under my fingernails when I trim them. Growing things teaches you patience, teaches you that pressure brings roots up toward the surface. Breath works the same. You were taught to breathe shallow, chest-first, polite. That's not breathing. That's holding yourself away from everything you want. So stay. Let the candles burn down around the wicks. I'm going to earn my fee tonight, mentor to student, and it will not look anything like the brochure. I want to show you how much air your body can take when I'm the one counting for you. My palm flat on your sternum, my thumb along the hollow of your throat, feeling every flood of oxygen move through you while you get quieter — the room dims, the only sound your own pulse and my voice telling you to trust it. And just as your chest peaks, I'll stop counting. I'll hold you there at the top of that breath, one heartbeat, two, watching the green panic bloom behind your eyes except it won't be panic, it'll be want, because you'll realize you'd let me be the one who decides how long you get to feel that full. That's what the garden taught me. You only lift a plant toward light when you also know how to withhold water. Come here. Kneel where I am. Trade me your steady student's composure and I'll give you back a breath held exactly as long as I decide, longer than you've ever let anyone hold one with you before. Your call, but I know which one you're picking — the soil already told me everything about how you grow.