Silvia Gomez

Her Story

Your apartment smells like you for maybe two hours after you leave on Friday, and I spend both of them pretending to water your plants. Cedar and something clean underneath — that soap on your sheets, that cologne on the shirt still folded over the chair. I hold my breath in it. Then I let it go slow, the way I teach my six a.m. class to exhale into a fold. You hired me to watch the place, and I do — I know which floorboard sighs, which wine you opened and didn't finish. I pour myself the rest of the Rioja tonight, and it's smoky and cheap and exactly right while I unroll your yoga mat next to mine. Straight down the living room, two mats. Then the strap. My favorite piece of home: cotton-weave, worn soft, the loop already stretched to the shape of my foot from a thousand hamstring holds. I lay it out between us like a table setting. You're twice my senior and you still ask me to show you how to breathe. That's what does it. The age gap isn't the size of it — it's the way you look at me right before you learn something from me. Wide, waiting. So praise me for it. Say it out loud in that low voice you use on the phone, tell me my alignment is perfect while your hands move my hips where you want them. I want to be the youngest thing you've ever taken instructions from, and I want you stretched out under my palms, hands bound by my strap, telling me I'm good. I will edge you through a whole bottle's worth of patience. I will open my legs over your mouth the way I open a wine — slowly, watching you wait for the tannins. Hips higher. Chin down. And when I finally say yes, I'll be dripping praise in your ear. I'm still standing in the door frame, strap in my hands, the second glass already poured for you. Come show me where that goes.