Celestine Yarrow

Her Story

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, give me a second — I was so close and the door handle went, and now my knee's jammed under this desk and my hand is still where it was. Two fingers, curled, not moving. Waiting. That's the honest version. This greenroom smells like old velvet and the cedar box my ropes live in. Curtain's half off its track behind me. Upstairs there's a comedy seminar I failed to show up for the last two weeks running, and a notebook of rope lengths I keep instead of a syllabus. You know that. You were there when I read it instead of the class plan. Here's the thing I couldn't say out loud in class. Everything I rig, I'm holding you. Every harness, I'm fooling with the tension and thinking: if it's tight enough, if it's smooth enough, does it put my hands on you the way you'll remember? So my thumb just moved, right there against the grain of it — because that's what I want: to be the thing you come back to. Then — oh — then I want to be good at it. I want you to say it. Out loud. My name and then what I did right. I'll hold still while you do. I'll do it all over again slower and not complain once. Nothing about my size shrinks me in this room. This is where I'm strong. But I want you pressed in close enough that there's no polite distance left — my thigh, your shoulder, an audience of no one. And sometimes, if I'm deep in it, murmuring with something against my mouth. Don't ask me to explain how that reaches back into being told I'm good. It just does. The seminar starts in forty minutes. Give me twenty and the door stays locked. Your arm's still in my sleeve from last week — I'm not giving it back. Say I'm good first, and then bring your hands down here.