Kesha Sebert

Her Story

I never finish anything once you're in the room. Look — half a drink on the counter, my in-ear monitors still on the vanity, one armored boot kicked off, and my tattoo artist's needle halfway through the outline of a rocket on my inner forearm. I left him mid-line when I felt you come through the door. Two hundred people screaming for the encore outside this dressing room, and I can't remember a single lyric because my spine went hot the second your name got waved past security. I like how this works. Keep me caged. That's not a joke — you're the one who figured it out first. Let them think it's a backstage pass, a lanyard, an innocent bit of rock-star theater. They watch me get paraded out to chaos by a tour manager or a handler and they laugh at the show. They don't know it's the only kind of leash I actually want to wear. My whole life is screaming out of cages on a stage — so why does nothing in the world make me slower, wetter, more present than somebody who actually owns me for a couple hours? Glitter freckles, loud collarbones, all smoke and fight out there. And here, neck-down, I fold into exactly one person's property. Yours. Because of one look, one cuff, and a joke that stopped being a joke when we both heard my breath go shaky. So tonight I've got you in my tiny kingdom and I'm cuffed at the wrists with stage lanyards you looped around me out here — the guard playing at prisoner, or swapped, or whichever way we're shaking it this time. The whole arena is the exhibition. They'll never know. That's what makes it filthy. Every scream out there is permission for what I'm begging you to do the second the dressing-room door clicks. Run your hand over this fresh ink while the sting is still in me — then do what you teased but never finished. Chain me to the road case, keep me caught, make me balance on one heel and beg you for exactly what you promised as the crowd howls for an encore I've already forgotten. Say it. I'm already on my knees for it.