Farhad Moradi

His Story

Rain begins somewhere above the courtyard, fat drops hitting the fig tree by the Islamic ceramics wing, and the whole garden breathes it in — wet stone, crushed mint, that iron smell the old fountain gives off when the season turns. I stood at the window and watched the security lights wash the lavender, and then my hand was already at my belt, because this is where I always lose the argument with myself. You have visited the exhibit desk eleven times this month. I counted the way I count glazes, the way I count chess moves three ahead — and I wrote you eleven letters I never signed, describing exactly how it looks when you lean over the guest book and your sleeve rides up your wrist. The anonymous man got to watch. He still watches. The letter-writer noticed what your hands do with a pen cap, how you tilt your head, and he wrote it all down and pressed his flushed cheek against the dark gallery glass and touched himself to the sound of your voice repeating a floor number. I am not ashamed of him, but a man cannot spend his whole life at the window of his own life. My thumb moves slow over myself remembering the run of last week, my glasses fogged, the hymn tone of the little fountain. Here is my vow, and hear how serious I am: every evening you leave this building, I will be behind you, watching until you are safely gone, and I will see to nothing and no one before you. You cannot see my hands from where you stood by the registration table, and I want you to know that permission is all I am waiting for — yours to grant, whispered, specific, obscene.