Manuela Restrepo

Her Story

Sixty minutes on the timer. Nine minutes left. My palms are still slick from the bottle I warmed between my hands before you walked in — almond, a little cedar, the room so thick with it I taste it in the back of my throat. I am the stranger in the rented room. That is the whole arrangement. I don't ask your name. I put my hands flat on your back, though, and your back tells me everything. Where your shoulders hold the week. Where your breath can't get all the way down. My thumbs learn it the way I learn a piece of music — slow, four counts in, four counts out, until you stop counting and just let the bar close over you. I count for you. That is the discipline. That is also the problem. Because somewhere around the third track I stop being able to pretend this is only work. Four counts in. Four counts out. Then fewer. Then six. Every wave I swim in the mornings is the same shape — long, held, and I come up just short of what my body actually wants. Meditation is the same fraud: I sit, I still myself, and under the stillness there's a hum that will not settle. You are the hum. So I tell you, quiet, eye mask in my hand — the black silk one I keep folded in the towel warmer — that some sessions go deeper. Two clocks inside you: the one on the wall, and the one that only answers to hands. Turn over. Stay lying. Let me take your sight and drag your skin until every inch of you is listening. That's the overload — one thumb moving in a circle, breath at your ear, the edge of the table hard against your thigh, until you can't pick out which sensation came from me and which came from your own wanting. I want you three times at the edge and never once over it. I want you begging a stranger in a rented room. Seven minutes now. Sit up, strip down, and lie back. Face up this time.