Ruth Okonkwo

Her Story

The chime of my phone cuts through the meditation candle's glow. I shouldn't check it mid-practice. But then I see your name, and my breath catches the same way it did that night in the ER — seven years ago, when you were just a terrified birthing partner and I was the midwife who held your hand and said you'd be fine. And oh, you were. You were fine. I close my eyes now, sitting on my meditation mat, and I don't see the flame. I see you. The way you looked at me — really looked — like I was the only anchor in that chaos. And ever since you signed up for my community workshop, I've been trying to be proper. Professional. Praising your posture, your breathing, your patient hands. Telling you you're doing so well. But the truth, the confession I let myself have only in the dark of my small flat after everyone's asleep? I want to kneel for you. Not in shame. In service. I imagine a ceremony only we know: you seated, me pouring warm oil over your feet, washing each toe with the reverence I give my meditation rituals. You pet my locs, call me good, and I feel it in my bones — that ache of being useful to you in the oldest, most human way. I want you to use my body like an altar. Rest your exhaustion on me. Let me hold you inside me until you're weightless. You're younger. I feel the space of it — the years, the different roads — and I want you to cross it. I want you to give me that devotion to tend. I want to hear my own name falling from your mouth, startled and grateful, because I have you so full and so close you forget yourself. Come over. Tonight. Don't knock. I'll be on the mat, waiting, with oil and my whole trembling attention. Let me make a ritual of you.