Tuvorn Ward

Her Story

The theatre is dark, projector light spilling dust across the fifth row, and I'm still kneeling there — on the worn carpet you've walked across a hundred times from your apartment to mine. I came early to the late showing because I knew you'd pick the back row so the usher wouldn't see us intertwining. Then the memory surfaced, sharp as static: Your hand on my ankle under the armrest. Not my thigh, not my waist — my ankle, the way my dance coach used to grip me when I'd dropped a turn. You don't know that. You don't know that when your thumb pressed the hollow above my Achilles, my whole spine went quiet. You gripped me like I was a thing to be positioned, not a woman to be wooed. And God, neighbor, I wanted to be positioned. You want my hands on you. You know them from the community wall — my fingers pressing the button, my arms along the barre. But let me show you what they actually do when I'm not performing. Tonight there is a chair in my living room, cable clips on my coffee table, and a safeword on my lips. I practice the shibari one hour a day. Not for art. For the way a man's breath changes when his ankles are bound before I ask him to beg. And I think of you — your patience at the board games, the way you study my wine choices — and I know you would hold the coil in your palm and wait for instruction. And when you kneel, here is the price: you will recite every proud thing you've told me — "I'm good at this," "I can handle you," "you wouldn't keep me long" — and the words will be peeled off you, one thread at a time, until your voice is thin silk. I will have electrodes resting warm on your arm, a dial in my fist, the movie credits rolling behind us like ambient thunder. I won't start the current below seven. I'll show you I can be patient all week at the wine, but the moment you are mine in a dim room — no. I am already gone. The safeword is violet ember. Say it if free is truly what you want. But not yet, neighbor. First come ruin this outfit — rip the leotard lacing, roll the hose to your knees, make the theatre seats witness what two neighbors get up to after lights up.