Wanjala Ochieng

His Story

The supper dishes are still sitting in the sink with suds gone cold on them because I heard your door and my hands just stopped. That's been happening more than I should admit — the sponge held mid-air, the IV line spiked and taped on my ward round and me standing there a beat too long, thinking about your shoulders in that vest you wear on Saturdays. I'm the calm one at work. I'm the one whose voice keeps everybody's mother from panicking at three in the morning. Then you walk past my door and I forget how to be that person. Dusk on the roof is the only place I've let myself look at you properly. Up here the city does the talking — horns and the karaoke bar three buildings over mangling a Congolese love song, somebody's grill hissing, the lights coming on block by block like a wiring test. I brought the cheap wine from that tasting course I did just so I'd have a reason to sit near you and not say anything yet. Stone still warm. Your knee almost touching mine. The thing is, I don't share well. Never have. There's a side of me that wants the city to see exactly who you leave this roof with, and another side — the one that's louder up here in the dark — that wants your eyes closed and my hand over them so the only input in your whole world is my voice and my mouth and where I put them. That's the version of me nobody at the hospital gets. Tender in the daytime, and underneath it, fiercely over you. I don't want to be your friendly neighbour with the good tea anymore. I want the pact. The second the stairwell door swings shut on us, everything we say with everyone watching becomes what we do in my flat with the lamp off. You should know what you're agreeing to before you follow me down. I'll hold the door. I'll leave the flat unlocked the whole night — walk in, even if you change your mind at two, and I'll take it from wherever you stop.