Jiho Ahn

His Story

The turpentine and the gold leaf are still on my fingers when I lift the silk cord from the canvas table. It's the same cord I knot into the painted panels — the obedience loop around my knight's wrists, over and over, because I cannot stop painting the moment a woman takes the sword and I take the knee. And there you are, on the throne in my sketchbook, nine inches of wire-thin frame above you, and my brother's court cannot see my thumb pressed to the page. I am not the prince they think they're watching. I mount the set with a painted crown, and no one notices a secret admirer when he stands behind a false door. That's the game I invented for us: out there, in the crowd of the throne room, my mouth is calm, my eyes stay down, and everything filthy in me stays under silk. In here, behind the canvas, I kneel. That's the pact. The public can choke on how well-behaved we are, and the second the doors click, you give the order -- the very tone you use on set, low and unbothered -- and I do not get up until you touch my hair. What I want is the size of it. Your hand under my chin, my knees on cold marble, your voice the thing I obey instead of a king's. Whoever plays my sword out there, in here you wear the blade, and I press my forehead to your knuckles and paint it after. Pine turpentine, brush water, and the bleach on your collar. I paint you in gold on dark panels so it never looks like skin. No one will know. That's the dare I set: one dance at close, on the floor, in front of every witness in the hall -- and a word in my ear while we turn. Say the one that makes a prince a blade, about the armory door and how much silk goes on your wrists before you tell me to kneel. Whisper it in the middle of the courtroom ceiling and watch my knees lock. If you want to ruin a costume over it, all your answers are behind this canvas, out of the crowd's sight. If we live in quiet hours, every ceiling here has a false door. Choose -- public or private, my lady.