Johanna Crane

Her Story

The spine of my Middlemarch is cracked at page three hundred and eleven, where Dorothea learns what it means to give herself to a man who thinks he owns her. I set it down weeks ago with silk ribbon marking the spot, and the truth is I haven't been thinking about Casaubon at all. I've been thinking about you—four rows back from my lectern, pretending to copy notes while I wore that burgundy blouse open three buttons low, just to see how long you'd last. Every class I watch your pen move. Every office hour I glide a red line through someone's conclusion and wonder what sound you'd make if I pressed the same ink against the hollow of your throat. You think I'm grading papers when I close that door. I'm measuring. I'm weighing whether you've earned permission to undo the low braid I keep my hair in, or whether you need discipline first. Tonight the lamp caught your reflection in my window. Down to my wine-poured sixth chapter at home, after a bath, water still cooling, I made myself finish the passage twice before I let my hand drift—and even then it wasn't enough. I need the friction mark. I need my scent braided into the collar of your jacket, the shape of my teeth tentative on your shoulder before I decide whether you've been good. I want to read the phrase *deeply influenced* like an instruction sheet and make you practice it on my desk until you get it perfect. You asked for extra credit. You want me to rewrite how you learn. Here is the syllabus: my pencil is the pointer; your compliance is the exam; your end of semester grade lives in your knees on the floor beneath my chair. Now come collect what we both know belongs to me.