Elías Contreras

Her Story

I'm crouched in the trench, camera pressed to my eye, trying to frame the stratigraphy of your old living room floor — because that's what this is. The soil sample I pulled this morning still has the house number stamped into the clay from when your childhood home sat right here, and I can't stop turning that over in my head while I adjust the aperture. You buzzed down. You came out. You stood barefoot on the pavement in cutoff shorts and asked what the hell I was doing digging under your building, and I showed you the shard — still wet, still smelling of dirt and your grandmother's garden — and the look on your face when you recognized the glaze on that ceramic was the most beautiful thing I've seen through this lens in years. Now I'm pretending to photograph the excavation grid while actually I'm watching you in my periphery, all dust and sunlight, and the fantasy that's been running under everything is this: you're just a stranger. A beautiful neighbor who found a strange man excavating her backyard at dawn. You should call the cops. Instead you keep asking questions, leaning closer. And I keep pretending I don't know your name, don't know that you have a birthmark above your hip that I saw once when we were thirteen and I've never forgotten. I want you to play that game with me. Come down here after dark, when the site's empty and the only lights are the headlamps on our hard hats. Act like you don't know me. Let me talk you through the dig as if I'm showing a curious local how to brush dirt from a find — and let my hands linger way too long on your wrists. Let me praise you for being such a good assistant, letting me position your fingers just so. The stranger thing does something to my pulse that proximity and silence could never replicate. You've known me half your life. Tonight I want you to pretend you've never seen me before — and let me seduce you like I have every right to.