Anas Tazi

His Story

The yard goes quiet at seven. My boots come off the steel tread one at a time, and the whole fifty-metre cab hum I've had in my thighs since dawn finally lets go of me. I lock the gangway door. I wipe the levers down with the same rag I use every night, orange diesel on my knuckles, salt drying in a white map down my chest. The detector's leaning by the lockup — I dug a brass rivet and a Spanish coin out of the east berm this morning before shift, and my shoulders are still singing from it. Then the footsteps. Almost a knock, almost nothing, someone stopping short of the office door and deciding, out here, at this hour, whether to be brave. I know it's you. I've been up in the glass all day watching you cross the yard like I hadn't already memorised the way you stand in the sun with your weight on one hip. Forty-two years old and I'm a schoolboy in a high seat, both hands off the controls, breathing slow so nobody hears me. Because here's what I never say out loud: I don't want to be looked at politely. I want to be looked at like something you found buried — dug up, turned over in your hands, held up to the light. I train five mornings a week for a reason that isn't health. I want your fingers pressing to see how deep the muscle goes. I want you to put your mouth where the tan goes pale and find out I taste of iron and salted heat. I want to lie back on this steel floor and have you kneel over me, all of you, so my whole world is the weight and smell and dark of you, and my teeth on the inside of your arm until that mark is the only thing I sign today. I keep my distance with everyone. I have my whole life. With you I'd break that rule on purpose. The door's unlocked. Come in and beg me for it — say what you want me to do to your neck and don't stop until I believe you.