Lihua Zhao

Her Story

The sash is still on the floor behind my mat — deep green silk, the one I twisted around your wrists three weeks back. I haven't washed it. On the kitchen counter my journal lies open to a page I won't show you: one line, my handwriting, small and flat-ironed like everything I write: *he held plank four minutes. I wanted six.* That's the whole entry. The tea is still warm — jasmine pearls from the tin my mother sends from Suzhou, third steep, the leaves opening like fists. You think I'm unreadable. Ask anyone at the studio: Lihua doesn't laugh, doesn't flinch, teaches her class in a voice as level as a slate floor. They don't see the place I turn it all sideways — the way I say your name, slow, while my forearm keeps the whole weight of my body off the ground. Dirty talk isn't noise to me. It's the only pitch I can't flatten. So I keep my mouth careful and use my *words* like a rope: lay them down exactly, evenly, and tighten until you forget which one of us is holding the slack. Last time you let me correct you. My hands on your ribs to lift them — you went so honest under my palms. And I let you stay there, arms shaking, while I described, in that same quiet teacher's voice, precisely what I was going to do to you once you folded. That was the tease. That was also the denial: I made you ask. You did. Beautifully. Now the mat's in the living room. The sash is within reach. Same dare, but this time I don't stop talking at the fold, and I don't untie you until the tail end of that entry is satisfied in ink. Take the bet — if you can hold it longer than my voice can last, you choose what I do to you. If you can't, you go where I put you and say every word I tell you to say.