"This Is How You Keep Me"
Student:
I didn't know being claimed could feel like this
not chains,
but silk around my wrists,
an ache that comes with comfort.
I miss her
before she's even gone,
count the seconds
between her fingers leaving my skin
and her voice echoing in my chest.
She orders coffee for me now.
Picks the songs I didn't know I loved.
Leaves her scarf draped on my chair
so it smells like her
(she says it's to mark what's hers
but we don't use that word.)
Her touch is daily now.
Not stolen anymore
but sharpened.
Teasing.
A hand brushing my hip like it belongs there.
Fingers pressing my lower back
as if to remind me
You chose this cage.
And I did.
I did.
I wanted to be hers
before I understood the cost.
Now I'm studying more than books.
I'm learning what hunger looks like
when it lives in a woman like her.
How obsession isn't always loud
sometimes it walks beside you
in red lipstick and heels,
saying,
"Be good and I'll let you come tonight."
Teacher:
She has no idea how far this goes.
She thinks this is where it begins.
She doesn't know
I've been building this palace
brick by ache, by moan, by glance
since the first time she said "Professor"
like it was a confession.
I like the way she tries to take control
how she thinks she seduces.
The way she brushes her lips along my throat
thinking I'll shiver.
(As if I didn't already make her dream it.)
She curls into me now
like she belongs here,
like I'm soft—
but I am the edge.
The sharp curve of a polished sword
pressed gently between her thighs.
I don't say "mine."
I don't need to.
She lives in my rhythm now.
Texts me when she breathes.
Waits for my approval
when she puts on perfume.
(But I still prefer her raw
skin flushed, eyes hazed,
tasting of want.)
When she moans now,
it's my name
carved from her throat
like poetry soaked in heat.
But that's not what matters.
It's how she folds afterward
soft and ruined in my sheets,
eyes half - lidded,
trying to decipher if I'll kiss her again
or leave her waiting.
I don't have to chase her anymore.
She chases herself for me.
Both
Some mornings,
we forget the world outside the room.
Hands where they shouldn't be,
lips tracing promises we don't say aloud.
The door is always locked now.
Not for secrecy.
But to keep the world out
to keep us in.
She bruises my name into my skin
with her tongue.
I trace her surrender in circles
until she forgets she was ever a student.
Until I forget I ever had restraint.
This isn't love.
Not yet.
This is what comes before it.
The spark.
The collapse.
The slow, beautiful undoing.