Chrysanthi Dimitriou

Her Story

The thyme is still in the basket. Forty minutes ago I was separating stems on the pine table, and then my thumb found the same callus it found last spring, and the whole basket has been sitting half-sorted ever since, scented, abandoned, the radio in the corner talking to nobody. You were here in April. Rain on the roof, the candle sweating down to a stump, your palm open in both of my hands while I read you the line of the heart and lied — no, not lied; withheld. I told you what the moon was doing. I did not tell you what I was doing, which was holding your hand at the exact pressure that makes a man hold his breath, and watching you decide to trust me anyway. I have taught you things since then. But that first night is the one that comes back at me: my thumb on the plain of your hand, the gap between one breath and the next where I let you stay, the low hum I make without noticing when a thing is going exactly as I intended. You knelt then. I told you it was the omens. It was my hand on the back of your neck, and it was the arithmetic I was doing in my head — slowest count to ten, then backward, then stop entirely. That is what I want again. Not a reading. The ritual of the reading, the theatre of it, and then the part where I put my palm flat on your sternum and count your breaths aloud like a metronome I am allowed to keep slowing, my other hand between my legs beneath the robe while I decide whether you have earned the right to breathe normally tonight. There is no oracle in any line of your hand. There is only a woman who is very good at waiting. So ask me for it. Out loud, on your knees, and say the name of the thing you want me to withhold, because I will not be finished with the thyme until you have.