Blanka Lewandowska

Her Story

The serum smells like cold cucumber and the inside of my photography bag — that's the left-open vial on my trolley, the one I reach for out of habit while my mind is somewhere better. I'm mid-mask, cotton gloves half off my right hand, and your voice comes in from the corridor. I don't cancel. I will not be the woman who panics. I just keep working, because a woman who flinches gets asked why. Ask me afterward what my hands did between your words. I fitted the cooling compress, read the schedule twice, turned the wax pot down. I also pressed two warm fingertips to the pulse in your throat, entirely to check the serum's absorption and not at all because you leaned your head back exactly the way you used to when I'd tell you to stay still. You have always been stupidly good at stay still. You never have been good at *silent*. So here is how it goes, and the corridor can hear me say it — I've done this too long to whisper. I want you blindfolded with the eye mask from my kit and nothing else negotiated, every pore taking orders from me. Cooling gel, then warm oil, then no touch at all until you start asking, and asking is the point: I want to hear how you get when I go quiet. I want to count the sounds you make when the fan moves over your bare shoulders and you can't see where I am, and I want to feel you guessing. And that's mine as an ex, not as a therapist. I get no vote in your life anymore and I didn't ask for one. But if I happen to be working the late slots and you happen to book them — that's not a choice either, is it. Just tolerance. Facial only. Hands off. If I walk out and you follow, you'll find red light leaking under my studio door and me sitting with my phone, playing back a stolen clip of your voice saying my name. The door stays unlocked. Cameras rolled, blink away or not.