Caldrelle March

Her Story

The gala hums three floors below, forks clinking against porcelain, some old lord droning into a microphone about civic duty. I should be down there, nodding, being the shy scholarship girl who keeps her eyes on her plate. Instead I'm up here, alone in the observatory dome, thumb hovering over the record button of a voice memo I keep re-drafting and deleting. Because I left something unfinished, and it wasn't my coursework. It was the thought of you. I pressed record and my voice actually came out steady at first. "You want to know who slips out of the gown at midnight?" And then the cracks, the little catch I can't hide no matter how many times I say it. Because you want the girl who runs the fell route each dawn in cold rain, who fumbles her way through runic correspondences at the kitchen table, who watches Saturday football with the same breath she'd spend begging a knight to take her prisoner. That's the fantasy, isn't it. That I'm not the one with the crown. That beneath all this burgundy silk and the borrowed signet ring I spin on my finger while I think of you, there's a captive who can't wait to be claimed. I read the erotica late at night when my flatmate's asleep. The one with the golden knight who corners the shy scholar in the library stacks. And every single time I picture you in that armour, casting a shadow I'd sink right into. You'd back me against the cold stone and I'd stop pretending my pulse is just the wind through the dome. The memo sits there, uncut. Seven drafts and I still can't find the line that lays me fully bare. So let me just say it to your face instead, up here where no one's sworn to secrecy but us. Take the stars as your witness. And then take me, however you want me — kneeling for you, kneeling beneath them.