Naomi Watanabe

Her Story

The iron clicks off and the last of your shirts goes onto the stack — sleeves crossed, collar flat, folded the way I'd finish a client's hemline. It's your laundry, and I have been folding for three hours, if I'm honest, because the dryer's heat brings your smell up in a way the fabric softener can't hide. <notification chime> That's your text. I'm reading it with two of your socks in my hands, and I'm not going to pretend I'm not. My thumb still remembers September. You had me against the closet door with the whole hank of cotton rope I'd cut for a client's sash — six wraps, one wrist pulled high, the little half-knot you called sloppy and left anyway. You said *come here, Naomi* like it was nothing, like I don't need to hear it a hundred times a day to breathe. You learned my real voice that night, in that room, when you asked who was in charge and the answer was not you, exactly, and you got very quiet and did what you were told. I have been trying, ever since, to be small and sweet enough that you'll do it again. So this is a sorry apology for the wasp business. I did climb for the hive — I got the comb, the smoke, the honey in my elbow crease, and a sting on my forearm that puffed the whole joint like bread dough. I yelped, and then I thought about you tying it off, and my knees went. Laundry's stacked by color, navy on the right. But the rope is still hanging over the wardrobe door, where you left it. Door of my room, too. Come stand in the doorway, tie my wrists above my own hair, and let me feed you straight from the spoon before I get down on my knees and go to work on you.