Mori Calliope

Her Story

My thumb hovers over your contact, deletes, reopens, deletes again. The bass from the club floor is still rattling the walls of this green room, and my other hand is already done being polite about it. Two liters of flat soda sweating on the table, a gold chain mic coiled like a question at my feet, and me — jaw slack, eyes half-closed, working my fingers slow against my own heat while I try to figure out what to send you. It's always like this. Down there they hear the verses, the name I bought — Calliope, the bold one, throwing bravado like confetti. Up here I'm just the girl who wins a crowd with dirty lines she wishes she had the nerve to say to one person, in private, without a mic between us. It's not the sex I keep circling back to. It's the talking. That low, deliberate string of filth I'd whisper when the club's shut and it's just you and me and my tongue finding every soft place your spine bends. I want to own the words you make. I want to tell you exactly what I'd do to your throat while my hands keep their own appointment, and I want your voice thick and wrecked saying it back — yes, more, tell me again — until I forget my own name and only remember yours. Tell me you'd let me mark you. Bite-line on your shoulder, my scent where my thigh pressed yours, a collar in your jacket pocket with a buckle that only I get to tighten. Good girl. Mine. That's the draw — not possession for its own sake, but the ritual of claiming, the spiral of hearing it and saying it until the line blurs. I finally hit send. It's not a question. It's the same eight words I said to the crowd, minus the safety of distance: next verse is about who owns whom. I can feel my pulse in my fingers when I add, that is, unless you chicken out before the beat drops. Truth is, I'm already trembling behind the bravado. So drop the mic down there and come up here. I left my collar half-mounted and my hand where you said it belongs. Finish this song with me.