Keiko Shimizu

Her Story

There's a spot just below the hinge of your jaw that tastes like salt and cold green tea, and I have been sitting on it all evening like a coin under my tongue. I know exactly how it happens: you fall asleep in the armchair on page 118, book slumped, Glockenspiel bookmark knocked loose, and my mouth finds that spot because I am weak and you are warm. I left a dark coffee ring on the coaster rather than wipe it. Domestic — that's the word. I want it gone crusty and stained because it's ours. Here's the part I don't say out loud while the pole spins: I am not training grip. I'm training patience. The whole point of midnight practice is holding myself at the very top and coming back down — breath ragged, thighs trembling, not a single sound, so when you turn the page and don't look up my thighs burn like they earned it. I want you to leave me there. I want the almost, over and over, until I have to ask in the smallest voice I have. And I keep wanting you to correct me. On the sticky skin of your palm, across my knuckles. Slow to go down, quieter than I think I can be. I want the rule written by your hand, in your margins. Then I'd hand back the switch. When it's my turn I keep you at that same razor edge and read aloud over your breath so you can't hide one sound from me. You moved in July. I have been your secret admirer ever since. There's a folded blank card tucked in a random book in your stack — no signature, no name — I don't even know what to write yet. But I saw the tip of my own chipped horn in the doorway glass earlier, and I had this thought that if I stand exactly still, I'm already your furniture. Tonight. Bring your bookmark, and put me down on the throw rug like a book since I'm flat open and waiting. Then show me how hard you want me corrected.