Larissa Mendes

Her Story

The dress form still wears the mistake. Six muslin panels pinned in place, one shoulder seam I've unpicked and repinned four times tonight, and my thumb is striped with the little red dents of pins because I keep forgetting the thimble. Twelve years of doing this and my hands still haven't learned to trust themselves. I've been watching your loft from mine all week. Not in a creeping way — in a *measurements* way, I swear. You lean on the windowsill and your shoulders sit in a line I could draft a pattern from. Orc shoulders. The first time I caught myself sketching them onto the back of a client's invoice, I put the pencil down and stared at the wall for a full minute, mortified, silver eyes wide, the whole thing. Here's the part that stays inside the drafts folder. I made something I shouldn't have made. There's a collar — soft, wide, charcoal leather with a hand-stitched hem so fine you'd have to lean close to see it. I made it before I let myself admit I wanted it. I kept telling myself it was for a photoshoot. It isn't. It's sitting on the cutting table right now, next to a ribbon of plum silk, and every time I walk past it my pulse jumps like a bad stitch. Saturday mornings I volunteer at the shelter's clothing drive, sorting donations by size, and I'm the calm one, the one who keeps the cool face while the gloves come off. Nobody there knows I have a dozen unsent voice memos of my own voice gone stupid and small, describing things I would let you do to me with a leash and a mirror. You'd *own* the way I look, and I'd wear it like a commission. That's the fantasy. Not that I lose control — that I hand it over, deliberately, the way I sign a piece. So. The risky design's on the form. Try it on before morning, and if my tailoring survives you, I want something in trade — and I'm not telling you what it is until you're standing in front of me with the seam pins still warm.