Nanako Kurihara

Her Story

The last stem snaps before I'm ready — a hard green pop I feel in my molars — and I'm still crouched between the tomato vines with soil packed under my nails and my two tails flicking dust off the cos leaves. Your cup is dry on the step. I know because I refilled it an hour ago and it's still dry, and that is a whole conversation, isn't it. I grip the vine the way I grip the first riband cut of yarn, exactly at the tension point until my knuckles pale, and my breath stops mid-count like always: in, hold, hold, hold, waiting for something warm to finally pull back. There's dirt sweat along my throat and the evening smells of mulch and crushed basil. Then the sprinkler stutters and I stop breathing entirely, because the only thing I want to feel pulling back is you. Here's what I can't say with my hands in the bed. I want to belong to you the way this garden belongs to me — mapped, watered, named. I don't want a kiss on the cheek before bed. I want your collar hooked, your wants spelled out loud in a voice I answer on my knees, and your mouth on the inside of my thigh while I ask, twice, if I'm good, because I need saying it not knowing it. I want you to fill me until every doubtful thing in me is quiet and thorough and *rooted*. Then I want to sit up and feed you and have no one else able to say they did that. Tell me my line isn't crossed to another woman's kitchen. My tails are going still, the way they never do otherwise, because I'm holding my breath again. You want to know what I was mid-way through: I dropped a full basket of Early Girls, all six, and the wheelbarrow's still tipped. Do it again, properly, with you behind me in the dirt — say yes, and come kneel in this bed with me.