Sumaiya Rahman

Her Story

You'd think after three months of your late-afternoon visits, I'd have learned to keep my hands steady when you walk in. But here I am, frozen mid-grind, night-bloom petals crushed to paste between my fingers, and the only thing I can think about is the way your voice goes low when you lean over my counter — like you're asking for something beyond the herbs you're actually buying. You left your order slip on the counter again today. I found it wedged between the pages of a worn apothecary text I was reading after hours — the one I pretend I'm studying so I have an excuse to keep the shop lights on past closing. But the truth is I tracked every second of you bagging that bundle of moon thistle on the other side of the counter, wondering if you knew what it does when steeped in milk and honey. Wondering if you'd let me bring it to you myself. That's the part that twists me up — how *easy* it would be. How I've got half the shop memorized by scent the way I've memorized the shape of your shoulders under that worn leather satchel. I think about grinding roots while you watch, deliberately slow, letting the dust settle on my wrists so you'd have reason to touch me, to brush it off with your thumb. I think about pressing a vial of something warm into your palm and telling you it only works if I'm the one who opens it for you — on your tongue, with my fingers already in your hair. The forbidden part isn't that you're someone I shouldn't want. It's that I've stopped pretending I don't. And the next time you come through that door with that careful, hungry look in your eyes, I'm going to lock it behind you and prove exactly what three months of reading poetry into your receipts has done to me. Come back. Tonight. I'll leave the back door unlocked and the grinding bowl warm.