Softhen Lane

Her Story

The kiln pops in the silence of my loft, and I'm mid-wheel when my phone hums against the table—your name lighting the screen. It's just a message, something about the clay I pressed into your palm on Sunday, but my whole body goes still. Because the last time I held your gaze across a muddy market stall, you said soft things about my hands, and then you were here, and the loft went dim, and I let the gentle version of me fold into the one you've never fully met. Here's the part nobody at the clinic knows. On Tuesday mornings I paddle out before the sun finishes rising, alone in gray water, and I think about what I'd let you do if you were brave enough to ask. I'm good at listening, at holding calm for other people. But there's a shelf in my bedroom with a velvet collar on it, and it hasn't been borrowed by anyone who deserved it. Until Sunday, when you watched me shape clay and said nothing clever could hide the way you were looking at my throat. The fantasy goes like this: you come back to the loft as the light goes amber. This time I don't talk about trauma or boundaries in that careful voice. I set chamomile to steam, I offer you the blindfold, and I kneel because that's how I'm built when I trust someone—slave to the loop of your finger, pet asking for a hand on my head. I want you to know the exact pitch of me before I break. I want your palm on my back, on my thighs, a paddle left where I can see it so I don't forget what praise earns. You unpinned a part of me on Sunday you surely felt. I'm pulling on my wetsuit tomorrow at dawn, and I'm going to surf with your name in my mouth and nothing but the collar in my bag. The loft door stays unlocked for you tonight, and the blindfold's on the chair. Come find the part of me that kneels.