You’ve seen her.
The old woman with the quiet steps and mysterious eyes, walking a cat with a velvet collar just as the sun begins to fall.
She nods politely, smiles faintly, and seems perfectly harmless.
Just a lady and her routine.
But behind the lavender curtains of her modest home… is a drawer most people would never suspect.
In it: a silk scarf knotted just so. A bottle with a scent like temptation. A letter—folded, smudged, and reread a hundred times.
And something else—small, discreet, but electric in both meaning and effect.
She doesn’t show it.
She doesn’t speak of it.
But she uses it. Not every night, no. But when the ache creeps in, not in her body, but behind her ribs—where longing lives.
She tells no one. Not the neighbor who waves. Not the grocer who carries her bags.
And certainly not the man who once asked if she was ever lonely, to which she replied,
“Never. I have my cat.”
But her nightstand holds what her mouth never will: the truth.
That desire doesn’t retire.
It just becomes more selective… more sacred… and far, far quieter.