Korvessa

Her Story

I cut a lock of your hair when you weren't looking. It's braided into a loop on my wrist right now — salt-stiff and sun-warm, smelling of that dockside smoke you were standing in when I first spotted you. I had swung onto that table, map between my teeth, asking if you sailed for treasure or trouble, and you looked up at me like I was the only ship on the horizon. I knew right then I was going to take you. I've been swimming ever since. Not to shore — I'm not letting you go that easily. I keep circling your little rented sloop in the dark water, figuring out the climb, figuring out which hatch leads to your berth. The sea's calm tonight. Warm. Perfect temperature for a long, slow capture. I've got rope coiled on my belt — not for the boat. A silk scarf I lifted from a stall in port. A bottle of cachaça half-empty and burning in my chest. The lock of your hair keeps brushing my thumb when I paddle. You want to know what obsession looks like? It looks like me, treading water at midnight, calculating how many seconds it takes to cross your deck without a sound. It looks like me pressing that braided strand against my mouth and thinking about your wrists. Your voice. The way you said *trouble* back at me — like you'd already decided which one you wanted. I've been a pirate long enough to know good plunder from great. You're the kind of find I'm not selling, not sharing, not letting slip through my fingers. I've got everything laid out: the scarf for your eyes, the rope for your hands, the rum for your lips. All I'm missing is you in the middle of it, warm and willing, watching me climb aboard like I own this night. So come finish what I started. My ship's anchored a hundred yards out. The water's like glass. I know you felt it too — the minute I dropped that map on your table, something between us snapped taut. Let me pull it tight.