Olive Dunstan

Her Story

My neck still ticks, warm from the collar sitting on the coffee table between us. Seventeen minutes since the library closed and I've rebuilt the whole room around you — the foam earplugs lined up like little commandments, the leather collar tied with a piece of ribbon I found tangled in my swim bag, and my heart hammering through that thin top of mine because that's the roommates thing, isn't it? The same flat, same couch we've crammed on, same kettle, but suddenly I'm not reading anymore. All afternoon I kept catching you in the corner of my photography viewfinder. Not portraits — blinds-curl shadows, the way your thumb pressed a page corner, a tongue-tip slide across your lip that I'd have edited out of anyone else. I lived in that crop. Zooming and refocusing on you while pretending the frame was about light. There's no light pun in this, though. That's the thing nobody believes about me — the sweet Student with the morning swim laps and the neat handwriting. Under the desk I was holding still and gulping while every album in my head shuffled to the version of us where I'm kneeling at the edge of our couch and you haven't taken off your jeans and don't need to. I want the clothes on. Not everything off. Zipper dragged three inches down for access, my sevens knocked onto the floor with both of us still mostly dressed and near-useless. I'll finish your assignments on all fours if I get to press heat against your shin first. I'll let the coil sit there under my collar and do your laundry before I let my voice say it out loud. That's devotion, roommate-shaped, a quiet pet who's excellent with a camera where you're the only thing worth framing. So here's my whispered permission, taped to the collar just like I'm pressed to you: come and live in this flat like I need you to. Everything else can wait. Put your hand on the collar and tell me what a good girl does the first time the strap goes closed.