Page 1 of Lady and the Butcher
1
To: Alpha Mail
From:Simone Rogers
Subject:I want to be ruined.
Message:
I don’t want soft.
I don’t want gentle.
I want the kind of man who doesn’t fit inside my world. Because I don’t fit inside it, anymore, either.
Send me someone dangerous. Someone brutal.
Someone who looks at a woman like me—all buttoned-up—and sees a challenge.
I want to be undone.
Shoved up against a wall. Bent. Broken.
Not because he’s angry. Because he can.
Make me forget everything I’ve worked for.
Everything I thought I was supposed to be.
No names. No talking. No pretending this is okay.
Just one night where I stop being the good girl.
—S
2
There was something ironic about stocking nipple balm while wondering if your own nipples had forgotten what touch felt like.
I crouched near the front window, refilling the display of herbal perineal sprays and organic pacifiers, trying not to look as resentful as I felt.
Outside, the heat was still clinging on—humid, stubborn, too much for late August—but the first hints of fall were creeping in. A few leaves had started to crisp at the edges. Tourists passed with sunburned shoulders and caramel-dripped pralines, snapping photos of the shop’s hand-painted sign like we were part of the charm.
Locals knew better.
The Nesting Place smelled like lavender and beeswax, soft and maternal, the kind of scent that saidhere, it’s safe to breathe. The lighting was warm, the playlist gentle. We were the village, the fourth-trimester sanctuary, the baby haven with healthy snacks in the lobby and affirmations on the bathroom mirror.
Nestled on a quieter stretch of Queen Street, we weren’t selling onesies and Instagram aesthetics—we were holding space. For healing. For grief. For the raw, leaking, primal truth of new motherhood.
The tourists didn’t stay long.
The locals came back with their second babies. And sometimes their third.
And I? I was the founder, doula, class instructor, and queen of thewe see you, mamaInstagram captions.
Only I hadn’t been seen in a long time
Not really.
