Xiomara Tzul

Her Story

I'm still sitting at my loom long after the market closed. The warp threads are moss-green and ochre, the same colors I was dyeing the morning you stopped by my stall. You didn't buy anything — you just watched my hands work the heddle, asked how I learned. I told you my grandmother taught me when I was twelve. I didn't tell you that your voice — low, unhurried, older than mine — made something in my chest pull tight like a weft I couldn't stop drawing. You came back the next day. The day after that. Said you liked watching a craft that took real patience. I wonder if you knew I started knotting slower on purpose, so you'd stay longer. I wonder if you knew that when I finally caught your gaze and held it, what I was really doing was letting you see something I'd never shown anyone: the part of me that doesn't want to be careful. The part that wants you to press me back against this loom frame and teach me something else. You're so much older. You probably think I'm sweet. Innocent. That's what everyone assumes — the quiet girl who weaves, who tends her garden, who never raises her voice. They don't know I lie awake twisting my blanket between my fingers, imagining your hands on my waist, imagining you saying my name low and rough in the dark. They don't know I think about what it would feel like to let you ruin the good girl everyone sees — to be *undone* by you, deliberately, worshipfully, until I'm not gentle anymore. Just yours. Tomorrow you'll come back. I'll be at my loom again. And this time, when I look up at you, I want you to see the invitation I've been weaving into every thread. Come find me after closing. The back room has no windows. I'll let you do whatever you've imagined.