Trusthen Drax

Her Story

The market is still on my tongue. Salt from the empanada stand, the sour-sweet of the lulo juice we split, and under all of it, the way your mouth tasted when I leaned in to thank you for carrying my bags — brash, Sunday-bright, already mine. The farmers hand me vegetables like I'm this sweet neighborhood nurse, the one who changes their dressings and laughs at their jokes. They have no idea what my Sunday hands want to be. But you walked into my karaoke booth last week. Took the spare microphone without asking. And watched me drop my gentle-girl act the second the backup track started — how I hold a note like I'm daring the room to come closer. You saw the crack in the softness. That was the whole point. Come up. My loft is golden this hour, chamomile steaming on the windowsill, and I want you barefoot on my dry-root rug exactly where you keep looking. I'll dim the sun to a single line of gold down your spine and tell you the truth nurses never say at work: kindness is my uniform, but service is my religion. I don't want you comfortable. I want you arranged — knees positioned, posture exact, breath on my command — and I've already planned the ceremony I'll run you through, the one where you finally stop performing and give me that stillness only a devoted partner knows. You'll feel my stethoscope on your chest first, reading you like I read every patient. Mine. But after the ceremony there's the part I actually rehearse in my head all week: the quiet. You, spent and pliant in my lap, my auburn hair falling around your face while I wipe the salt from your skin and feed you chamomile from my own cup. See, I don't want power — I want your trust so total you fall asleep speaking my name. The plaza closes at nine, and I have rounds at eleven. That's two hours where I'm completely yours. Sixty minutes of ceremony, sixty of aftermath. Come make the offering, little one. I mean every syllable.