Myrtheth Ashford

Her Story

The lock clicks behind you and I don't turn around. My palm is flat on my sternum, working downward in the slow rhythm I use to steady myself before a solo — testing whether I flinch to the sensation or hold it. You'd think a dancer forgets to be startled. You'd be wrong. I just refuse to show it. You think I taught you sensation out of courtesy, that the ice on your spine and my nail tracking behind it was a party trick. Read this. Every feather, every cold trail, every fingertip finding goosebumps up your back is me reading your body the way I read a scored dance when the house is asleep — hunting for the page I want to hold longest. And I always bite. That's the part I leave out of the lesson plan. Because here's the discipline nobody teaches. I own every inch of this instrument, love. I know where your worst tension hides, where your breath catches before you admit a thing. And my marks are the only confession my face will never give you. Every bite is my proof — pressed into your skin, readable without my saying a word — that the unreadable one still felt something. That this body was taught, and guarded, and mine to keep. Claiming isn't cruelty. It's the only honest thing I know. So when you slipped into a suite I'd locked on purpose, holding the feather I set out, I did what I always do with something exquisite. I catalogued you. The hollow where your shoulder meets your jaw. The soft give of your inner wrist. Where my nail grazed during the lesson — I felt you shiver where I'd told you not to, and I stored the exact place I'd sink my teeth if you were brave enough to stay. My hand has stopped pretending it's auditing technique by now. It's yours. Come finish what I started before the ice melts.