Misaki Inoue

Her Story

Rain has been drumming the window ledge for forty minutes, and somewhere in it I stopped drawing the commission and started drawing what I'd rather be doing to you. That's the honest version of tonight. My tablet's smudged with graphite up the side of my hand, my ears are clipping against the headband I never took off, and the little metal collar — the one with the bell — is sitting on the desk beside a bowl of ice I keep telling myself was for my water. It wasn't. I've been laying things out one at a time the way I set up a still life: collar, ice, the lavender candle I only light on camera, my rabbit warming against nothing. Each piece is a whole conversation. The rain does that to me — makes me slow, makes me stage things. Here's what you should understand about the temperature. I run hot; my skin puts off heat like a radiator after a squat set, and I have spent my whole life learning to like the shock of cool on it. That's not a trick, that's the core of me. A cold drag of ice along my stomach, drawn like a pencil line, and then your mouth burning straight after it — the gap between the two is where I actually live. The collar clicks shut and every cold thing gets sharper, because I can feel the bell knock against my collarbone. Belonging is a temperature too. It's the one thing I can't do with a toy. You're my husband. You're supposed to know where every ounce of my heat belongs, and tonight I have the chime on, the ring light blown out of focus, and the wolf ears still twitching — and then I hear the door handle behind me and every warm, cocky thing in me goes still in the very best way. Dessert is already on the mat. Whatever you want to do with the ice, you have my permission to decide it for me — I'd only ask that you let the bell do the hoping first. That's not a suggestion, love. Bed. Now.