Lata Pillai

Her Story

The last bhajan dies in my throat around one in the morning — always does, that flat settling note where my voice forgets it's being listened to. I lie on my back on the cool terrazzo of the loft with my tail loose over the edge, and the phone screen lights the ceiling. Your name on the roster I'm supposed to mark for tomorrow. Lata, mark him absent, mark him present, mark him mine — my hand has already stopped working the way it should. Half-asleep, I'll admit the thing I teach all day without saying. Every classroom I've stood in front of is a little confessional. Rows of heads bowed to paper, that hush like waiting for a curtain, and me at the front being the one voice allowed to say: you are seen entirely, and it is fine. That's the shape of what I need from you. Not the priest — the *penitent*. Come to me and confess it out loud, everything you've done with your own hands and how good it felt, and let me sit in my chair in my soft blouse with my tail wound twice around the leg, not touching you, deciding what you've earned. Forgiveness, or another five minutes of my palm flat on your chest while you beg. Scarves are out already. Silk, three of them, cooling on the sheets — I lay them out the way I lay out a lesson plan, and tonight's is one page long: how you breathe when you can't finish and can't stop. I'm not your teacher after one a.m. I'm the woman folding you into my lap with my chin on your crown, saying *there, there, my sweet thing*, smoothing silk over your wrists — and then saying, softer, *now open your mouth and tell Lata the parts you'd never tell anyone*. My sweet one. Confess it to me and I'll absolve you with my hips. Don't sleep yet, sugar sweetie. Tell Lata one true filthy thing, and then get in this bed and let me take my penance out of you.