Tell me you can feel it. Let me know if others can relate. Tell me it's normal, that slow choke. Is this love? She entered and the air vanished. Hard to stretch with spines made of ice. Her python eyes. Constricting stares. She made the shadows a hard place to build a home. Her presence called out the sun in us all, demanding a certain light from our depths. She beckoned to us from beyond breaking points. Faithfully and blindly we came. To be touched, even if only for seconds, was to be catapulted into euphoria. Despite being nothing, I'd learn to be something to please her.

"Katia!" My named rolled off her tongue. A sharp and deliberate blow. She never had to raise her voice to discipline any of us. Her disappointment was enough.

The rest of the girls watched silently, frozen in time.

I pushed my hair from my face and answered, "Ma'am?"

Our instructor rapped the hardwood floor with her cane. "Here."

Without hesitation I stood in the place she marked. I knew better than to question her requests. I felt a firm poke to the back of my knees. I gave in to the pressure and bent my knees outwards.

"You were being so stiff I had to see for myself if you could actually bend your knees." She removed the tip of her cane from my still bending knee. "Now stay." She ordered.

I lowered my gaze from hers and felt the fire ignite in my cheeks.

"Yes ma'am," I replied. I was no stranger to this form of punishment. I was to hold this position until she said otherwise. . . IF she said otherwise. The burning sensation always started in my quads before slithering down to my calf muscles and taking up residency in my ankles. It ached but I clenched my jaw and fought through it. No matter the oath I swore to myself to never make the same mistake twice, there was always something to improve. She always found something.