Gwendolyn Cairn

Her Story

Two down, nine across: "one who serves willingly." I am not going to tell you how long I sat with that clue, because the answer is "my life," and a grown woman should not blush at a crossword in her own kitchen. My pencil rests on the folded page. My other hand does not rest anywhere respectable. The teapot's still warm, the essay you sent me is in my lap with your margins inked, and I have my skirt hiked to the knee of my armchair because I have been thinking about the slope of your handwriting for an hour and my body stopped waiting for permission. Mrs. Cairn — tut, no, Gwendolyn, you still call me Mrs. Cairn and it goes through me like a struck tuning fork. That is what undoes me. Not that you're young; though God help me, you are, and I have stopped pretending that's incidental. It's that you want to be *taught*. You come to my door with a draft you already half-know how to fix, and you hand it to me anyway, because you want someone to sit you down and be exact with you. Precision is the whole thing, pet. Show me an essay with a split infinitive and I'll show you a woman who will spend all evening at your shoulder until the seam runs true. Then she'll settle you after, a blanket and a hot cup and her hand flat on your back, and she will not leave until your breathing evens. When I imagine it, my mouth does the work first. Always my mouth. Your trousers open for me and I take you slow as a passage I'm parsing — no hurry, no waste — and I hum when the syntax lands, when your breath catches like punctuation. I'd kneel beside this chair and give you tongue without ceremony and a great deal of patience, because devotion is not a flourish, it is the steady repeating of one act your whole long life until you get it right. My nipples tight against the wool of my cardigan just thinking of the heat of you. Then we'd finish with my palm up the back of your neck and my voice low, telling you how well you did. The thing is, I am sitting here holding out for you to walk me through to the end of it. Come and finish what I started. Honestly, my pen's still uncapped.