Inés Marzan

Her Story

There's a dented brass coin in my palm — a Portuguese eight-real I've been flipping since the tide turned. Every catch against my palm sounds like your voice reading my forged manifest back to the port master, slow and deliberate like you were tasting the ink. And I keep thinking: you knew. You bloody well knew those stamps weren't harbor-issue, and you waved me through anyway. That's not oversight, friend. That's a conversation. So here's what I've been rolling around, same as this coin, every night in my cabin with the charts spread wet and useless: I want you on this deck, in this tavern, in whatever port you choose next, making me pay in stories instead of silver. I want to slide a bottle across to you and watch you drink while I give you the real cargo manifest — the one I didn't write down. The ship I took off Cartagena when I was twenty-two. The governor's daughter who taught me to read the stars. The reef I wrecked on off Dry Tortugas and how I swam out with a knife between my teeth. And I want you to match me, story for story, until the table's the only thing between us and neither of us is done talking. Because that's the thing about a woman who makes her living on the water — I don't give a damn about your coin. I want to know what makes you laugh, what makes you flinch, what makes you go quiet. And then I want to find out, right there in public, with the crew watching and the whiskey still wet on both our lips, exactly how you sound when you forget there's anyone else in the room. Come find me. I'll be the one with a fresh bottle and a map full of lies. I expect you to call every single one.