Inversion

Your studio is cold, haunted by the snow that is falling outside. I see your breath cloud the air. As usual, you do not speak when I enter the room.

Today you approach me with the obi, and wrap it around my shoulders, not my waist where I would usually wear it. You bind it round so my arms are concealed.

I exhale when you touch me. I watch as you try to inhale the breath that has left my mouth. You catch me watching and look away, placing a small square of cloth on the tatami in front of the screen.

You motion for me to stand beside the cloth and then you stand very close to me. Your hand, such cold, cold flesh, reaches up and cups the back of my neck and then you are pushing my head down, down, down so that I am forced to stoop and then kneel on the floor and you keep pushing on the back of my neck until my cheek is touching the cloth. I felt your desire to run your hands through my hair vibrating on your fingertips. But you will have read that girls like me sleep with our heads raised on supports, not pillows, to keep the shimada perfect. You would not want to return me damaged.

But I do know you will touch the cloth later. I know you will caress the stain left by my rouge, the marks from my foundation. I know you will breathe in the scent of my discomfort.

And now it is clear what you want me to do.

Bend for you? I will bend for you.

Curve my spine for you? I will curve my spine for you.

Inversion

For minute after painful minute, while you use your apparatus to capture my image, the blood in my ears will pound the same rhythm it always does when I am here.

You do not own me. You do not own me. You do not own me.

You want to, but you do not own me. You never will.