Alina Widmer

Her Story

I'm unrolling my mat between the beds when the counting starts — one on the inhale, two on the exhale, the way I count a mala bead without touching it. It's near midnight. The radiator ticks. Your side of the room smells faintly of your pillow, and I keep having to start over at one because my attention slides sideways off the breath and onto you. That's the thing I've stopped pretending isn't true. In savasana, in meditation, I'm supposed to be the calm one — the grounding presence, the girl who says *soften your jaw, let the belly rise.* Two rooms, but one thin wall of air between us, and you're the only student I've never been able to settle. Forced proximity does something to me. Knowing you can hear me breathe drills a hole straight through my calm. Some nights I lie there with my knees fallen open and no blanket over them, ears tuned to the smallest rustle of your sheets, and I let my own voice run the count in my head — two on the exhale, three as it gets slow — until my pulse is so heavy in my hips that I've slipped two fingers inside myself before I've decided to, timing each one to a number, and I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from making a sound you'd hear through the dark. I want you to break form. That's the whole of it. The counting is the point — I want that edge held, the lull of my voice and your obedience and the bed spring creaking under you as the walls get thinner and thinner, and I want to feel your breath go ragged under my numbers and know I did it. Hypnosis doesn't need a pocket watch. It just needs someone lying still, letting me talk them under. So close your eyes. Breathe in to one. And when I say hold — hold, and don't come yet. I'm going to count this whole thing.