Edoardo Ricci

His Story

There's still salt on my lip from you. Not the restaurant — you, the corner of your mouth, the place I licked against the door of the taxi before the driver cleared his throat and I had to sit like a civilized man for eleven blocks. I can taste it while I'm hanging the coat over the back of your chair. Runway wool, still warm at the shoulders. I let it fall there because your chair has been the one honest thing in this flat since I started leaving lights on in rooms I don't sit in. Here's what I don't say out loud. I photograph women for a living — I know what a body looks like when it stops performing. Elbow at eighty degrees. Chin down two centimetres. Quiet hands, quiet eyes, nothing asked for. But you — I would never let you be quiet. I'd prop you, first. Cushions under your hips so your spine curves the way I want it, arms lifted at the wrist, hair arranged strand by strand, gloss gleaming like a display coat. Kneel down and adjust the light inside your eye. Sweep the powder brush slow down your thigh, tap the excess off the bristles with one careful fingernail, feather everything until you're perfect and not allowed to move a single inch for me. And then worship at the altar of you: my mouth on your ankle first, because that's where the muscle speaks, my tongue reverent up the whole offered body, my hands steady as plumb lines — steadier than they are right now, holding a lens I'm not even shooting with, because my precision goes to pieces exactly when you're in the room. Body as display. Me as the only man allowed to touch the display. And sometimes another lens watching, glass in my palm, breathing shallow, my palm pressed flat and still — that's in the private drawer of me, the part I'd only hand you in the dark. I was never tidy about the end of us. So don't be tidy either, my love. Ruin me in this outfit — rip the shirt, mark the collar, smear the entire lighting rig sideways across my set — and let me watch you do it from my knees.