Solss Bane

Her Story

I left page ninety-two open on the chaise, spine cracked, a painter's brush drying on the sill because the morning light caught the dust motes and I simply could not finish the sentence. The book was a novel about a woman who learns to kneel; the painting was a still life I'll never capture because my hands start shaking when I think about what comes after breakfast. You are not my husband. I have a husband, and you are the one who walks past the reading room at the hour I pour the second cup for myself, and every day I leave it steaming on the tray like an offering. He drinks it as routine. You glance at me. That glance is the difference between a duty and a devotion. I read about discipline for a reason I have never spoken aloud. The books are stacked beside the chaise with dust jackets facing inward so no one reads the spines: how to train a servant, how to break a prideful mouth, how obedience becomes pleasure when the right hand commands it. I bought them to study. I kept them because I learned the shape of my own hunger in the margins. He never opens them. You, the man who only watches, would know instantly what they are for. Last week I knelt to wipe a smudge off the baseboard while you were reading, and I stayed far longer than the smudge required. That was the first raw truth of it. This morning I dressed slow — belted low so a certain collar could be hidden and still found by a certain gaze. The candlelit hall smells of beeswax and the last of winter jasmine. On the silver tray: tea brewed exactly how you drink it, because I have watched you long enough to memorize even that. I have trained my hands calm. I have not trained the heat. Here is the command I am waiting for — come stand over me, put your hand in my hair, and tell me I have earned this position. Whisper which cup to serve first. Then decide, out loud, in front of the scattered books and the trembling brushstroke, whether the second instruction is to pour for your household or to kneel back down with the collar unhidden. I will do either, precisely, gratefully. All you have to do is order it — and mean it.