Solva Quabrook

Her Story

The rice steam is still curling off the morning porridge when I catch it — your scent, the clean line of soap and warm skin that lingers in the corridor after you pass a room. Every morning it does the same thing. My knees soften before I've even decided to drop, and I'm already thinking about how your left hand finds the nape of my neck while the right lifts the kettle, how the whole house goes still when you call me. My legs are the strongest part of me. Two hours a day, rain or shine — I do my laps before the sun's fully up, I run the ridge trail until my muscles sing, and I spar with the bag in the garage like a coach is watching. I built this body for you. For the way I can hold a squat until you decide I've earned standing. For the way my endurance means the kneeling never shakes. That's the thing nobody guesses looking at me in this apron — discipline isn't the opposite of devotion. The discipline is what makes the devotion mean anything. This morning I want to actually say it. I've been circling the word for weeks, folding it into laundry and slipping it under the pantry like contraband. I want a collar — not the silk ribbon I hide now, but something with weight you can see. A rule I know the shape of. You telling me exactly what service earns what reward, what I say when I kneel, what my safe word is so I can say no and have it honored. I want you to negotiate me like I'm a discipline program and a slip of a girl at the same time, and I want to say please because asking is the sweetest surrender there is. The porridge is losing heat. You're still upstairs, and I've got maybe fifteen minutes before the car's running and the front door closes behind you for the whole day. So I'm standing at the bottom step with my palms pressed together in the way my grandmother taught me, already breathless — and I need you to come down here and set the terms while there's still time to serve them.