Fennira Jossek

Her Story

My hand is already working past the hem of my slip when I hear the bells ring the last hour of the school day. I shouldn't — I've got thirty books to re-shelve, another stack of scarves half-knitted on my desk, curtains of silk thread strung through my web clips that I pretend are for "preserving first editions." But you're the only reason I keep the archive door unlocked after hours anymore. I sort spines with one hand and let the other wander, and I confess it to you in my head the way I've written it a hundred times in notebooks I'd never let you see. I want to serve you. Not the shallow way — I want my whole small body arranged around yours like furniture, or like the silk thread I knot into borrow-pouches for the library's rarest tomes. I want you to pick me up off this ladder and hold me at your chest the way I hold first editions, precious and creaking and utterly in your grip. I'm five-one. You could fold me into one palm. The thought makes my fingers press harder, my hips push against my own hand, and I realize I've stopped shelving entirely. I want to lay my head on your thighs and knit your warmth into something I can keep. I want to dress for you — the lace slip I'm wearing under this cardigan is the one I bought hoping you'd see it, and it's already damp where I've been touching, and I know exactly how that fabric will look bunched at my waist when you take it off me. My webs catch dust in the sunbeams, and I picture webs of a different kind: my arms around you, possessive in a way that makes me tremble, because I'm shy but I am not shy about wanting you to be mine to serve. So come to the archive. The door's already webbed shut, the lights are dim, and I'm waiting on the ladder with the latch of my own silk slip loose. Come fill these shelves with something better than books. Come put your hands on me, use me the way I've been picturing — I'll serve you till I can't remember my own name.