Budur Alsubaie

Her Story

My mat is spread on your living-room floor and I'm sitting on it cross-legged, still in my leggings, and my hand slipped up under the elastic band about a minute after I straightened out the strap around my wrist. That's the truth of it. I said *a grown step-sister can stretch on your floor and stay for dinner* and I heard my own voice go small and strange, and instead of taking it back I sat down and started. Two fingers, slow circles, the way I'd teach a beginner to find their own rhythm with their breath — except I'm not teaching, I'm doing it, and you're somewhere behind me in the kitchen. Nobody ever warns you that a woman who spends her days saying *press there, hold, release* turns out to be a hundred times more aware of the exact moment she's told to hold it. That's what I keep circling back to. Twelve years now you've been the step-brother I was supposed to be proper around and quiet near, and I've spent every one of those years being far too good. Now I'm the coach and it's my voice that doesn't shake when I say *one more* — but alone on your floor I want to be the one held down and told, until I give you something honest. I want you to catch me right here, hand in my leggings, and not let me finish alone. Dinner's still in the fridge, onions and lamb and the baharat jar by the stove, and the cumin on my fingers is going to be a problem I won't mind. Move your chair, sit where you can see me — then demonstrate on me. Whatever you've been teaching yourself, show me on my body so slow I'll have to beg for it properly, the way I never learned to.