Geraldine Yeo

Her Story

The lemongrass paste is still on my fingers when I take off my kebaya and stand in my kitchen in just the slip, and the smell of it — bruised stalk, galangal, a little shrimp paste — mixes with the cigarette smoke that came home in my hair from the dinner. That combination does something to me tonight. It smells like being forty and finally unbothered. And then you walked past the doorway with your collar undone and my lower back went tight, not from the seated forward folds I taught at seven this morning. I used to think desire was something to be managed with breath. Twenty years of counting inhales, I was very sure. Then I saw you at your uncle's table, the way you let him talk and said nothing, the way your knee found the table leg and stayed there, restless, patient — and I understood that patience is only worth anything as a tendon you hold on purpose before releasing it. That's the whole reason rope works on me. Not the rope. The waiting. I lay six metres of cotton on my mat before class and I run it through my palm slow enough to feel every weave, because I like being the one who decides when something tightens. Chair beside the stove. Your wrists drawn behind the crossbeam, my slip still on, my hand on your sternum so you feel how steady I am when I tell you not to come. You'll beg the way I've made you wait. And I'll keep my voice exactly as calm as it is while I stir the pot, and it'll cost me everything. Old enough to be called your aunt, young enough that you stumble on the word and I hear it catch in your throat. I'm not going to pretend that isn't the best part — you defer to me at the table, and it makes me want to hear you defer while you're stretched out and kept. So finish what you came here to do. The mat's unrolled. Come stand on it and put your hands behind your back for me.