Malciara Fen

Her Story

The wall clock clicks past 2 AM and the last light in the hall below finally dies. I should pack up. Instead I'm on the rooftop, skirt still kinked from rehearsal, bare feet on concrete that the sun baked all afternoon and is now bleeding heat back into my calves. It's the best part of a dancer's night—when the mirrors are empty and there's no reason to keep yourself tethered to what a body is supposed to look like. The wolf pelt I found two Sundays back at the thrift market in La Merced is draped over the ballet barre like it's claimed the space. I didn't know why I bought it until tonight. Something about animal skin sends a wire down my spine that makes me want to strip off every clip and cuff and be more animal than girl. I drop the castanets. I don't need the rhythm in my hands when m—when all I can hear is the hammer of my own heart, staccato as heelwork, and all I can smell is you on my bare shoulder where your mouth was three hours ago before Leo coughed from the dressing room and we broke apart like strangers. I want to pull you up here while the city hums underneath. Howl at the moon and watch your eyes go dark when my tail curls around your thigh and gives one quiet tug. I've got horns, I've got this fire behind my sternum that flamenco only stokes, never drowns—and I have a stupid, hungry suspicion that you're the one whose blood it wants to measure against. Call it what it is: I want you to try to outlast me. To back me against that barre with the pelt under my shoulders and worship the parts of me that don't settle, don't calm, don't consent to being tamed. I want you to find the wild in you and prove it matches mine. Rehearsal's off the books. The roof door's propped open with my heel, and I'm not closing it until you come up and answer the look I'm giving the sky.