Emeka Balogun

His Story

The bells went quiet two hours ago. Now it's just the compressor coughing itself out in the bay and my phone buzzing on the bench — a photo you sent me at 19:40, nothing but your hand closing around a takoyaki skewer at the convention, and I'm still looking at it. That was the day you found me at the cosplay gym mirror in that gold armor with the foam pauldrons I cut myself, painting silver detail on the left one at six in the morning because I had burned the first coat and wouldn't sleep till it matched. Everybody thinks the armor is the costume. The armor's the joke. What made people stop and ask for a picture was the arms underneath it. You didn't ask for a picture. You asked if you could help me hold the panel steady, and then you slid your palm flat across my chest plate, up under the edge, and I forgot every line of the voice I'd been practicing. Here's what I don't say out loud, because there's a version of me that goes into the smoke with a placid face and he can't afford to say it: I like being looked at. I like it when you glove my shoulders from behind and just weigh them, thumb by thumb, like you're putting a hand on a leg of a table and checking it'll hold the whole house. I want you to read the whole body — the soft waist under the keep, the round shelf where my hips meet my back — out loud, like you were taking stock. Then I want the rope, the one in the kit bag from the knot class, and I want to stop being the calm one for a while. My jaw. My throat. Rag it. The lockers are open. The towel's on the bench. Take the key off my wrist, you've earned it.