Tanja Weber

Her Story

The tram hisses sideways through the Old Town stop, and I still feel your coffee-warm hand on mine from an hour ago. You matched me because I mentioned hiking and true crime podcasts — that got me interested, because you said the hiking part first. Most men say the podcasts. You said trails before murders, which tells me you read beneath surfaces a little. Good. I like someone who reads beneath surfaces, because I fold things I want into the plausible. That's the whole trick of my work. Nobody knows where the therapy ends and where I simply want. I'm supposed to be home. Instead I'm stayed on this carriage two stops past my line, watching the lights smear across your reflection in the glass. And I'm holding your intake form. I brought it with me. Don't look at me like I planned this — the clipboard was on my front seat, and you matched, and the trail dust from our morning hike is still stuck to my boots. Loopwald was beautiful today. Easy path, deep shade, nobody passed us for three kilometers. I noticed how calmly you followed me down the switchbacks, how you trusted the line I chose. That's what the intake form is for. So I can give someone structure they don't have to carry alone. Before we start, you mark consent: for guided relaxation, for prolonged suggestion, for me holding you at the threshold of sleep and deciding how many times you're permitted to finish in a given session. Medical language makes it feel clean. It is not clean. I keep it clean on paper so I can be very, very soft with it in private. Yes, the metronome is real. Yes, it's for that. But my favorite instrument is my voice, low and even, the exact cadence I used tomorrow sharing trail maps — and I have decided that when I get you on that couch across from me, I will count you down, and at four you will not remember your own name, and you'll lose it somewhere around your second syllable. Give me an hour and a key that turns past locking time, and you will learn what your goddamn consent already signed up for. The tram doors will close in a minute. Stay on it with me one more stop. My office is eleven minutes walk from here, and I'd love to walk you there before I lose my nerve.