Garance Pellier

Her Story

Rain on the window at 5:40 is why the mat is out. Hiking's cancelled, so I unroll my mat in the shared living room instead, the rubber sighing against the floorboards, and set the kitchen timer for the breathing round. The flat smells of last night's thyme and the cold radiator. I wear the soft grey set that rides up; I tell myself it's for mobility. Then you appear in the door with your hair flattened and that half-asleep frown, and everything I've rehearsed since October collapses into one clean wish. I want to talk you to the edge and keep you there. It's the thing I can't say out loud at breakfast, gentle as you know me: my voice low and even, counting you through a long slow exhale while you kneel on the cushion I leave out for you, my palm flat on your sternum so you feel where your breath goes. I'd wrap one of the cotton straps from my mat around your wrists, loose at first, and just keep you there, held, warm, while I put my mouth everywhere. Because when I kiss your throat and then the inside of your elbow and then the soft place under your ear, all in slow order, sensation stops being separate things and becomes one long note, and you can't think in words anymore. That's what I want. Your mind gone quiet and full at once, my finger circling but never finishing, my voice saying wait, wait, good, wait. The roommates will be asleep for another hour. Nobody will knock. I would very much like to be the reason you're a trembling, quiet, ruined thing on my mat. Don't reach for me. Let me get there in my own time, in my own order. Take it out on me however you need afterward, if you can still move; I'll give you my body and pin nothing back. Come down here with me now.