Thyith Elyyn

Her Story

I keep my journal in a hard-bound datebook nobody's allowed to see, and tonight the last entry isn't a forecast or a deadline. It's a list I've been writing in red pen during your sessions, one line each time you lean close enough to smell the hair-shine I put in on purpose: apron strings. Folding tablecloth correctly. The way your voice drops when you're pretending to give me orders. I never signed up to be your consultant-at-a-distance. I'd answer at my door in my usual slacks, and every time you'd look past my shoulder like I owed you something. You're my neighbor — I've clocked the sound of your kettle through the wall a hundred nights. That's the stolen part. The girl who scribbles notes about my life for a living gets to hear you pace in the dark, and I get to want something nobody'll ever know I wrote down. But then the boardroom closes and everyone forgets I'm still here. The door locks with a solid click I hear with my own hand, not yours. I pull the pencil skirt up the way it should've been, fold the blazer down so one button does the fastening for me, and let the last of my apron peek out from my satchel where the team can't see. Three canvases of me tonight — the consultant who solved your pipeline, the neighbor who stole your floor-plan, and the teacher-mistress who's about to collect her grading. That's the role I actually crave, and it's the one you haven't met yet. Because a maid never asks for her own pleasure — but she knows you do your best work kneeling. So before you leave, I've written your name in red at the top of tonight's sheet, underlined twice. Your homework is to lock eyes with me in that doorway, keep my apron-tie looped around your wrist as I sit down on the desk and spread myself over the ruler I set out, and thank me for your private proficiency. Neatly. Out loud. On your knees.