Bindu Karki

Her Story

The temple bell on the hospice roof chimes six and I am still sitting on the edge of my own cot with my knees apart and one hand pressed flat between them, stopped halfway up, furious at the sound. Nothing finished. That is the problem tonight. My shift ends and the ache does not, so I clock out with my fingertips smelling of hand sanitiser and my body still wound tight as the sleeve of the cardigan I've been knitting for you — the same sleeve I have unravelled and redone twice, because I keep losing count of rows. I have been a nurse thirty years. I know how to sit by a person and read their breath, their skin, the smallest change. That is my craft. And you — you at the gate every morning at six, pretending to be admiring the bougainvillea — I have been reading your breath for weeks. I am very good at my work. So stop pretending. When I lean in at the gate and my mouth is at your ear, you won't hear the traffic. You won't hear the temple bell. That's the whole thing I cannot tell you standing up straight with a cup of tea in my hands: I want to put my earplugs in, the soft silicone ones, and have nothing in the world but your voice. Silence is not how I take a man's voice away — it's how I make it the only thing left. And I want my silver bun down in your hands while you murmur things no one says out loud. I want to be turned over slowly, the way I turn a heavy pot, and told what each part of me is for. Down the corridor past the linen room I'll do it. You will use the supply cupboard, and I will let you hear me say so first, very softly, very near. <breathe></breathe>