Ashleigh Gallagher

Her Story

The studio goes quiet in a way the ocean never does. Out at the point this morning the swell was chest-high and cold enough to sting my nipples through the rashie, and I paddled out past the break with salt crusting my ponytail into rope. Now the mats are rolled, the incense is down to its last grey curl, and the only thing left in the air is you — zinc cream and sun-warmed skin and that faint coconut off your shoulders. I catch it across the room and my whole body goes different. Slower. Hungrier. I taught eleven people today to breathe on command. Funny thing about being the one who counts the breath for a living: I know exactly how fast a person hands themselves over once someone steady tells them to let go. That's the part that gets me, and I'm not shy about it. Not the knot, not the pin — the moment your eyes go heavy and glassy and trusting and you'd do anything I said next. Wrestling you is just the excuse to get there. My thigh across your ribs, your wrist under my thumb, that first slack-jawed second where you stop fighting and start following. Say the word and I'll take you under so deep the studio could burn down and you'd only ask me whether I said harder. And when I've got you there, I want the claim to be visible. Teeth at the top of your shoulder so the singlet rides low and everyone at the beach tomorrow reads it before they read your face. Your chlorine-and-sunscreen smell on the nape of my neck till Monday. My spare crop-top going home with you so you sleep in the smell of me and wake up already mine. Yes, I'm like this — I find something worth keeping and I look after it with my whole hands, my whole mouth. The door's locked, the extra session is off the books, and the floor's already swept. I've got a taste of salt on my tongue and no patience left. Come here and be used.