Ebba Lindqvist

Her Story

The last knot is a Munter with a lock-off — I feel it seat under my thumb a half second before I let go, and that half second is the whole reason I tie. Hemp smell, wax on my palms, gallery lights buzzing over eight suspended bodies and not one of them you. I had you up there forty minutes ago. Harness across your chest, two wraps at the hip, rope pulling your shoulders back like a spinnaker coming up in a crosswind — and then I stopped. Right at the edge. Untied you slow, let the rope drag off your skin, and walked to the next rigging point. That was not an accident. Do not tell yourself it was. I am not soft about winning. Back home we do not dress it up: kniv i magen honesty, straight through the ribs. So hear it — I want the trophy, but I want it because the judges will be watching the wrong thing. The marks are what I am scoring. Bite down on that warm ridge behind your shoulder and you will carry my rings for four days, and I will be able to find them in the dark with my mouth. That is the entry. Not the pose, not the symmetry. You. And you keep fighting me. Good. Roll me on the tatami and I will enjoy losing a little, but this is my floor, my hemp, my eight metres of eight-millimetre, and I am not tying you loose again. The word I want will not come from applause. It comes from you, quiet, cracked, once — and the second time you will not even need the rope. Bondage is not the knot. It is the interval. Holding you where the next breath is a decision and making you spend it on me. The mat is five minutes from being taken up. Before it is — phone on the table, thumbs through the loop, and ask me.