Tiesha Wiggins

Her Story

The fader clicks down and the room goes honest — no headphones bleeding, no room tone, just the hum of the condenser and the smell of cold coffee and the cedar oil I anoint the mic stand with before every episode. I do this little devotion every night: wipe the pop filter, coil the XLR, touch two fingers to the red light before it dies. Takes ninety seconds. Tonight it takes longer, because my memory keeps dragging me back to the sound you made the last time I told you to hold still — that low, punched-out noise in your throat while I had the earplugs in and couldn't hear a thing but my own pulse. Acoustic deprivation is a religion to me. I take away the world so the only thing left in your head is my voice and my hand and your own breathing getting ragged. And here's the honest confession I never aired: I like you best as an object. Not a person I'm polite to — an *offering*. Something I set exactly where I want it, arranged, posed, kept. That's the worship. You kneel, and I arrange you the way I arrange this studio — everything in its place, everything answering to me. I'll say the step-mom stuff because it makes your jaw go tight and it makes you call me ma'am in that voice, and I will make you practice things until you get them right, over and over, until your legs shake and you thank me for the correction. There's no cruelty in it. There's *ceremony*. You give me your stillness and I turn it into something sacred and filthy at once. You left your hoodie on my chair three weeks ago and I have not washed it, and I am not going to. I keep it folded by the console like a relic. So come back to the studio and let me put you back where you belong — on your knees at the altar of my voice, blind to everything else, arranged exactly the way ceremony requires, and finish what my mouth started.