"Teaching Desires, Testing Restraints"
The Teacher:
I changed the seating chart.
No one noticed
except her.
She was always near the back,
hiding in her own shyness,
but now she's closer.
Three rows from me.
No more shadows to disappear into.
Just my voice,
close enough to slip beneath her skin.
She avoids my eyes now.
But only after she looks too long.
It's a pattern
look, linger, retreat.
She's learning the rhythm of want.
And I am letting her learn.
Today I read aloud
my voice low, deliberate
watching her flinch with every pause.
I noticed the way she shifted in her seat,
tight thighs pressed together,
biting the edge of her pen
like it was my finger.
She doesn't know
that I notice everything.
The way her breath catches
when I correct her in front of the class.
The way her notebook is filled
with more than lecture notes
small lines of poetry,
half-finished sentences about "her."
I'm certain it's me.
She doesn't hide it well,
but I don't want her to.
Today, after class,
I stood at the door as they left.
She walked by,
murmured a thank you,
her voice too soft for anyone else to hear.
I didn't respond.
But I leaned slightly forward
my perfume, subtle and warm,
caught her like a snare.
She turned pink.
She stumbled.
I turned away
but I smiled.
Because it's working.
Every lesson, every glance,
I am pulling her in.
Slowly, obsessively,
like a page I never plan to turn too quickly.
She's young.
She still believes seduction is loud.
That it means a touch, a word,
a hand on her knee.
She doesn't realize
I'm already in her head.
Already the ink bleeding through her paper.
Already the reason she stares out her window
like it hurts to feel things she can't name.
Soon she'll try to run.
She'll call it inappropriate, impossible
but it won't matter.
Because I've already decided:
She will belong to me.
Not because I take her
but because she'll beg me to.
And when she does,
when that moment comes,
I will not be gentle.
She wouldn't want me to be.
Not anymore.