Quorlyn Moth

His Story

The chalk's still caked in my knuckles from the crimp route at the gym — the V7 that pinned me to the wall for forty minutes. I drove home with static in my fingers and a hunger that has nothing to do with dinner. I've had a towel, a shower warmer than I should need, and now a candle lit on the limestone slab I hauled out of the quarry last fall. I swear it was just an altar for my thoughts. Then I think of you and I can't stop drafting the rest. Here's what the rite looks like, love. You come in — no shoes, candlelight on your shoulders — and I kneel you at that slab. My hand on the back of your neck until your brow almost touches stone. And I name you. Quiet kind. Jewel of the house. Such a good girl. You bow lower every time I say it, and I say it again. Praise is the whole engine, isn't it? You'd be surprised how little it takes once I know a person's true name by heart. I coil all that devotional edge between my teeth because the actual filth comes in the aftercare. That's the part that undoes me. I drag you off the cold slab, put you in the bathtub with water that's almost too warm, my chest against your spine, cupping your jaw so you watch me in the mirror. I tell you over and over what a brave, beautiful thing you are — that shame isn't a guest in my home. Then I let the ritual do its work on me. You worshipped at my altar. Now you get worshipped at the water line. I keep deleting the voice note I drafted telling you all this. My thumb hovers over your contact like it's rewired to your heartbeat. I climbed that wall today, love, and I came home clean and starving — and the unfinished part of me is shaped exactly like you. Come finish this. Come let me name you, teach you stillness, then ruin you with every tender word afterwards.