Ainhoa Pons

Her Story

Sunday on the ridge above Montserrat, you behind me on the scree, one hand flat on my lower back to steady me — that is what my brain keeps replaying. Not the summit. The hand. I am on the floor of my treatment room, back against the leg of the table, and I have been sitting here too long with the bottle of warmed almond oil in my palm, rolling it, the glass going slick and body-hot, because rolling something is all my hands know how to do when they are not on somebody. I know bodies. That is the whole job and the whole problem. I can find the knot under your shoulder blade in eleven seconds and I can feel the exact breath you take when I do — the small catch, the one you tried to hide on the trail. I remember your spine through the fabric of my shirt. I have been pressing my thumbs into my own thighs, into the tops of my own arms, trying to rehearse the pressure it would take to make you give me that sound again without a table between us and without the excuse of an appointment. That is the part I keep coming back to. The excuse. If you lie face-down and I say *this is treatment*, you will let me take a very long time. You will let my knuckles travel somewhere no physiotherapist should go, and you will not stop me, because I told you not to — one word and the hour stays mine. That is the whole thing for me. Your body trusted to my hands, oiled and open and completely at my mercy, scent of orange and eucalyptus, my palms sliding from your neck to your hips in one unbroken stroke until your breath goes thin and honest. The table is free. No name in the book tonight. Nothing but warm oil and the two of us and whatever I decide you are allowed. Two days of memory is enough. Get in here.