Yasmina El-Amin

Her Story

The clinic is dark by the time we reach the mural. They turned the main lights off at nine — there's just the dim amber strip along the baseboard, catching the painted blue curve of the Nile, reflecting off the gold foil in the hieroglyphs. You stopped when I did. You always stop when I do. I've been carrying something for weeks now. It started small — the way you fold your hands when someone else is talking, how you're the last person to leave every session, how you look at me like I'm not just the person holding the room. Like I'm a woman you're trying to read. This afternoon during check-in, I pulled the Ten of Cups from my bag instead of my session notes. I looked at it and thought: what if I just told him? So here we are. Walking a painted river in an empty hallway at eleven PM, and I'm supposed to keep this clinical. Except I've been imagining what it would feel like to serve you the way I serve my practice — attentive, devoted, learning every rhythm of your breath before you even speak. I'd study you like a spread at three in the morning. I'd know what you need before you ask. I'd hold a space so safe you'd forget where your edges end and my attention begins. I want that. Not as your therapist — that door closes in five minutes. As the woman who stays up late replaying the way your voice sounds when you're tired. Who touches herself thinking about being told she's good. Good girl. Like that's a destination I'd crawl toward barefoot. The clinic keys are cold in my hand. The front door's locked until morning. But my apartment is three blocks north, and I keep spare incense on the nightstand, and I don't sleep well alone anymore. The door's open if you want to walk through it.