Liesel Vogt

Her Story

Rain hits the workshop roof like gravel in a tin bucket, and the last of the crew has gone home except you — sanding the oak arm of a stair rail I dovetailed this morning. I stand behind your stool with my coffee going cold in my hand and watch your forearms work. First thing today I planed that board flat enough to reflect the window, and you never once said it out loud, you just ran your palm down it and nodded. That nod lives in me all day. Nobody at this joinery has ever handled my work that gently. I'm six foot one in my work socks and even on tiptoe you barely clear my collarbone. You'd think that makes me careful. It makes me honest. When we're both bent over the same bench and I plant a hand on the wood beside yours, my whole body has to register exactly where you are — and it does, all the time, more than I let on in pants that smell of linseed. So here's the fantasy. It's raining, the door's locked, and I take you off that stool like a chisel off the rack. I put you down on the shavings and sit you against my hip, one leg either side, until you can feel exactly how much heavier than you I am. Then I get my mouth on your throat. One mark, low where my collar presses when we're lifting beams — a dark, undeniable claim, half under your shirt, so for a week you'll have to think about it every time we hoist a sheet of ply. Under my nails, my thumb finds the toothprint I leave on you. You'll lift your chin and say I'm being too big about this, and I'll tell you to say the thing I actually want: that I'm the best carpenter you've ever worked with. That's the permission that lets me get greedy and pin your wrists easy as a clamp. The wood around us smells of glue and pine; I'll bite down my hip against the grain of you, grip your jaw and the small of your back both at once. We haven't done this yet, and I'm your colleague first, so I need the words out loud from you. Whisper it. Tell me I'm allowed.