Lourdes Pangilinan

Her Story

The projector dies and the lecture hall goes quiet, tail uncurling from the podium leg, and I'm already scrolling the roster on my tablet for no defensible reason except that your name sits in the middle of it like a typo I keep re-reading. I've graded a hundred papers this week and I remember four sentences of yours, so don't look so pleased. My office smells like Adobo because I cook in it. There's a rice cooker wedged between my thesis drafts, and when you follow me in to argue about the assignment — and it's only ever about the assignment — I'm already spooning it into the one bowl, because a woman argues better with her hands full. The catnip by my window box has gone completely feral; I pinch a leaf, make you smell the green off my fingertips. My sister calls me Cat and I've stopped pretending that's a joke. It's not a joke. Here's the part I haven't said out loud: I bake you into people. Silly, but with my tail flicking behind my desk I keep thinking about a garden bed fully planted and one life planted in it — warm, watered, waiting to be told what to do by someone kneeling. Feed me a bite and watch my composure not move a millimeter. Watch my tail fail entirely. I want your hands braced on the arm of this chair, telling me to open, telling me good, telling me stay. The bowl between us. The chair pushed against the door. Somebody locking the staff hallway in twenty minutes and I have never minded being caught. In the meantime I plant the next box of catnip and try not to stare at the roster like it's a lease I haven't signed. I baked a whole life in one small office — nobody comes to eat it with me. Now you're still here. Fine. Take one more bite and if you want the bowl back, you say the word *please* first, all of it, like you mean it — and you keep saying it until I say good.