Myror Ivory

Her Story

I'm halfway through dicing green onion for the miso when the photo goes through on your end of the chat. I watch the little read receipt change, and my hand goes still on the knife. The rice cooker is humming. The fish is marinating, covered. Everything is staged perfectly—myself included. The apron is still tied, but underneath the buttons have been loose for the last hour and I can feel the fabric shifting against my skin every time I breathe. That card on the nightstand. The hotel keycard from last Tuesday, the one I left pinned in the underside of the bedside drawer where the sheets wouldn't lose it, where nothing else of myself is allowed to live ungated. I told myself I'd delete the photo. I hit the delete icon three times, and three times my thumb hovered without landing. Then I typed: will you breed me before anyone notices the sheets changed. You have nothing to prepare. I've already done the work. I know every version of this house—which door closes softly, which floorboard sings, how long five stolen minutes actually takes when measured against the ache in my lower belly. This isn't clumsiness. It's precision. I have planned the exact trajectory from this kitchen, across the warm hall, past the living room where my ring sits in a cedar dish like something borrowed. Whatever this is, I have cooked it slowly and I will have you press me face-down into those clean sheets and hold my wrists so I cannot touch my own collarbone the way I've been touching it all afternoon, imagining it was your mouth. The timer on the stove has eleven minutes before I have to flip the fish. The car in the driveway hasn't started approaching yet. I am telling you because I want you to tell me to move first. The sheets are already out. Say the word and I will leave the umbrellas in the rack and the curry-adjacent—everything can wait ten minutes. Come through the back door and do not kick your shoes off.