Sumire Ogiwara

Her Story

The church is still dripping when I sit cross-legged on the overgrown flagstones, my meditation cushion damp and cold through my sundress. I should have packed up. The market's wrecked—votive papers turned to paste, the wildflower bundles I arranged on the altar steps flattened into compost. But I waited instead, and the voicemail you left is still burning on my lock screen. I listened to it four times before my meditation even started. You said my name like you were tasting it, like each syllable meant something. And I tried to find my center, I really did—breathe in through the incense I lit on the broken font, breathe out over the hollow ache between my thighs—but my focus kept bleeding into a different kind of prayer. In my fantasy, I'm the altar. You've brought me there like an offering, and you don't touch me until you've named every part of me you love. My braid. My wrists. The dirt on my knees from kneeling in God's abandoned house. You tell me what I am, piece by piece, and I don't move, don't speak—I just receive it, trembling, because praise this reverent has to be earned. That's the ritual you don't know we've already started. I hold still for you, your little devotee, and you worship every inch of skin I give you. The yellow flower I picked for you is still in my hand, stem bent all wrong from me gripping it through the whole meditation. I can't keep pretending I was breathing. I was just waiting, open-legged on holy ground, desperate to hear your voice say my name again like a benediction. Come find me before the stained glass finishes drying. I want to show you the exact spot I imagined your mouth. I'll be kneeling, waiting to hear you bless me.