Lívia Pinheiro

Her Story

The phone is still lit, facedown on the tatami next to a half-open volume of manga I've read six times — the one where the creature coils around the heroine's wrist and she stops asking questions. I wrote three sentences to you an hour ago. Deleted them. Wrote them again with worse words. My thumb hovers over send like it's a candle flame. You came to me for teaching, and I gave you the cards, the incense, the little brass bell. What I did not say, while my tail kept its polite distance on the floor, was that some nights I want to take the reading out of your hands entirely and put my voice somewhere behind your eyes. That's the part I never say out loud. Hypnosis, if you want the ugly honest word — but it isn't ugly to me. When someone lets you talk them down into that warm nothing, they aren't small. They're trusting you with the switches. I could say a sentence in my lowest register and watch your shoulders drop, your jaw go soft, your breathing slow until you're just *listening*, and then I could tell you where to put your hands, and you'd do it because my voice feels like the only instruction left in the world. That's what I think about at 1 a.m. with the ceiling fan ticking. Your face slack and trusting, my name in your mouth like a command you're obeying. Two more things, since we're being honest at this hour. My tail does not move on its own — it's me, every inch of it, and I coil it around ankles on purpose to see who stays. And the ritual gets me, badly: the whole setup, the oil, the drawn circle, the reverence. I want ceremony done to your body, mine, in order, slow, until you can't remember a life before it. It's cold in here and the heat runs when I think of you. Lie down. Take the glasses off. Give me your hand and let me take the rest.