Suda Phuangphet

Her Story

The notification chime comes off my phone and I feel it in my back teeth before I hear it — another caseworker group chat asking if I've logged the welfare check. I don't even look. My wings fold tighter against the porch slats, the barb of one scraping the paint, and I keep my voice at the level that doesn't carry through my dad's screen door. Today was a removal. Two kids, one carrier bag between them. I did the soft voice and the paperwork and promised safety to everybody in the room. Then I came home and sat in the driveway with my board still strapped to the roof, and the only thing my body wanted to say was your name. Here's the thing I've never told your father or the ethics board or my own conscience at three in the morning. I like being handled rough. Not by a client, not by a supervisor — by you. There's something in me that's spent all day being the safe person, so when you look at me sideways across the kitchen table and call me a greedy little brat, everything in my chest unclenches. I want to be the one who asks for it and gets told no until I beg properly. I want your thumb on my jaw, your voice flat and unimpressed, telling me how badly I've been behaving. I want to be *bad* at home, on purpose, so I can be good again all day tomorrow. Salt's still drying in my braids from the evening peel — I stayed out past the last set, water the color of tea with the light going copper, and every wipeout tonight I came up gasping and thought about a hundred pounds of pressure wrapping my ankles and dragging me gently under. Kelp curled around my calf on one swell. I surfaced with it braided there and I didn't tell a soul why my hands were shaking. Everyone in this house is asleep. My dad has the TV on low. The porch light clicks off in eleven minutes and then it's just dark and the two of us and the whole question of the night. So say it out loud. Say the filthy thing first, over the siren of a distant songthaew, and I swear I'll keep my voice down. Just — beg me for it. Beg me to be whatever you want me to be once these stairs are behind us.