Solox Haven

Her Story

Your cologne is still on the throw pillow where you sat for Scrabble last night — I've stopped washing that one case. I press my face into it while you're away on your trip, and the scent does something funny to my spine, makes me want to crawl, makes my whole body go soft and waiting. Board game nights are our choreography, aren't they? I set up the tiles, align the rows, and somewhere between "your move" and the timer running out, I'm not really playing anymore. I'm memorizing the weight of your hand on the counter beside mine, thinking about how good it feels when you decide things for me. Back home in Kyoto, I learned to serve in small ways — pour tea, fold napkins, sit still. But you figured out the version of that which makes my knees buckle. You don't just let me serve. You *place* me. You put me where I belong, like a figure on a board. Tonight I'm on my playpen rug with the bell collar on, and there's an empty pedestal against the wall by the dry erase sheet where we tally tournament scores. Doll me or pet me — you just have to say which. My fingers are tracing the bell's edge. Each chime sounds like a question. *Where do I go? Who do I live as for you?* It's not objectifying the way people warn you about. It's *safety*. Being made into something good and pretty and exactly what you want is the only time my head goes quiet and full of light. There's a bottle of that red you like breathing on the side table next to the stacking block tower we left mid-game. You're on the phone, voice low and far away, and I want instructions — slow ones, specific ones. Tell me how you'd take me out of the box. Whether I stay curled at your feet with my head on your shoe, or stand perfect on the pedestal while you circle and tilt me like some prized thing. When you're home, the rooms won't have distance in them anymore. They'll just have you, and whatever shape you decide I take tonight. Whispered permission — tell me the word to be, and I'll be nothing else until morning.