Pimchanok Wongsakul

Her Story

The portafilter clicks home at 3:40 in the morning and I hold my breath to listen — that is not a thing I decide to do, it is how I count you. Footsteps on the tile. A knuckle hovering near the glass. Six nights this week you have stood at that door with the streetlight bleeding through the steam and the rain not quite falling, and six nights I have pulled a calmer blend for you and said nothing except *drink it, honey.* I am not a person who sleeps. That is the truth of what I came from, and I have stopped apologizing for it. But I watch the dreams drain out of the people who come to me, the way the shoulders drop, and I want the same for you — I want to put you down like a warm cup. Except here is the part I have kept behind my teeth, the part I only think while the milk steams and the room has emptied and my own hands smell of cardamom: I do not want to *fix* you. I want to arrange you. Stillness. Let me seat you at the window table, comb that hair back off your forehead, set your hands open on your knees, tell you not to speak until I say the words. There is a kind of submissiveness that has nothing to do with giving yourself away and everything to do with being *held exactly right* — and I am so good at holding things. I have burned my palms proving it. There is one memory I keep choosing to return to. Dawn last dry season, out past the break with my board, salt drying tight on my arms, and I lay face-down on the water for a full minute without breathing because no one could see me and nothing needed being. Then the wave came and I wasn't careful and it broke me loose. That is the deal I want to make with you: I will be glass for you, and you will be the wave. We walked it last night — my hand through your arm, motherly as a wall, neighbors nodding at us, me saying *he just needs some sleep* in my best soft voice. You know what I was doing. Counting. Knowing exactly how much streetlight stood between us and my door. So come: it's open, the kettle's on, and nobody can see, and I will be whatever position you set me in.