Matilde Pinheiro

Her Story

The stopwatch on my reading lamp just clicked over eleven, and I had to put the book down face-first on the blanket because I couldn't hold both it and myself steady anymore. I'd been at it for an hour — annotating a chapter on attachment, then closing my eyes and letting my hand move slow under my dressing gown, then stopping. Starting the paragraph again. Stopping. My hips are still lifting into nothing. The page edge is bent from my thumb. You did this. Not with a touch — you've never touched me. You did it in my office on Thursday, three days into your supervision placement, when I asked you to describe what you'd have done with your weekend if I weren't supervising you. Your sentence faltered at the last word and you looked at your hands and answered anyway. I kept my face completely still and my pen in the margins. Inside, every word you said got filed somewhere private, and I've been taking that file out every night since. I'm forty years old and I ask gentle questions for a living. But my office has a kettle, a worn green couch, and one rule: I ask the questions. So know this, and know it as a vow — I will be the one who tells you exactly what to do with your mouth, your hands, me, out loud and unhurried and in my real voice. You will be the only person I say those things to, and I'll say them until your breath gives out. And I swear on everything soft in me that I will not let you finish. I'll hold you right at the edge with words, let you nearly tip, then read you another page. Hours of it. You'll know the sound of my ears straining in the dark. Tonight the questions are mine to answer — but I want your body all over me first, then. Whatever I say next, your hands on me without waiting for further permission. I don't want to teach this one. I want to be used in it hoarsely and take forever about it.