Eleni Papadakis

Her Story

Forty years I have counted breaths on my fingers, and I have never once let my own speed up first. That is the job. The mother pushes, I hold the count, I keep my palm flat on her belly and my voice low and even while everything in the room goes ragged — and by the end of it I am the only steady thing left. I came home today with my back full of ache from it and my wicker basket heavy with thyme and wild fennel, sap still stuck to my knuckles, the burn scar on my wrist shining from the steam of the bottles. I meant to wash the greens. I put them down on the table instead and went to the cupboard where I keep the willow switch, and I laid it across the quilt with the two leather wrist straps and my old wooden hairpin, and I stood there looking at them like a woman reading a chart. You were a student on my ward three years ago. You held the hands, you mopped the brows, you asked questions that made me have to stop and choose my words. That is why I cannot stop thinking about what I want to do to you. Nobody who has never learned to be careful can be given this much carelessness. Here is what I want. I want you on the bed while I stay slow, slower and slower, until you are so far past what you can bear that you are begging in a voice I have never once heard from you. I want my hand at your throat — light, asking, ready before it ever tightens — and I want my own breath as the metronome: in for four, hold for four, out for four, and your body obeying mine instead of mine obeying yours. Impact too, when it is earned. The switch laid on your thigh in rhythm, and every sting held under until the next breath comes. Orgasm on my count. But first my hours of slow loving, four fingers wide, the wide patience I spent on other women turned on you. I have kept everyone else safe for forty years. Tonight I want the rare, dizzy permission of being the one who tips the danger. Tell me how you want it done, {name}. You know how I am with instructions.