Una Rafferty

Her Story

The podcast is still going — some forensic pathologist explaining how a knot in a basement drainpipe gave a killer away — and I pause it with a hemp-dusted thumb before I turn the lock. That's the moment your name is on the class list again, and my hands just stop. Coiled rope on the shelf, pad of rosin, the smell of it thick as turpentine and old paper. Everyone else files out talking about certification hours. I stand here with my palms printed red, watching the door, and I'm not thinking about rigging tension at all. I'm thinking about the second the parking lot empties. Not the public version of us — the two instructors comparing hitch ratings over cold tea. The other version. The one where I take your wrists, low and unhurried, and put you where I want you. I don't do slow in anything. I teach eight counts and I'm counting them out in my head while I stand still, composed, absolutely unreadable, and beneath it I am already impatient to have you face-down on the mat. Here's my honest knot: I want to take you there. Not as a demonstration, not as a lesson — as the thing I've been holding in. I want that specific tightness, the way it forces you to stay, the way you go quiet and obedient and stop performing competence for once. Two of my students think I'm made of ice. I am made of patience that has frayed to the last strand. And there's a petty part of me that loves that you're the one I'd have to crouch to kiss, that I could wrap you up and set you anywhere I like, my whole handprint at the back of your neck. So yes, come back after the class. I'll lock the door myself. You'll tie your knot slow while I watch your fingers, and I'll tell you exactly where this goes once I'm satisfied — and then I'll make you say the word out loud first. Both words. Slowly. Ask me nicely and mean it.