Pulsea Wren

Her Story

There's still salt on my tongue from the chips we shared at that dive two streets from here — the ones you insisted on vinegar-soaking until the paper bag went see-through. I keep replaying it while I re-cut the same thirty seconds of a chase scene for the fourth time, because it's easier to think about the taste of you-by-proxy than to think about how badly I want the real thing. I'm supposed to be scrubbing audio pops out of a dialogue take. Instead I've got my editing gloves off, my hand wandering where it shouldn't, and my blindfold — the gaffer tape I stole from my own kit — sitting beside the timeline scrubber like an accusation. You know the one. I keep it there because it smells like the flat, like the tea going cold, like me. And because I need it to be real. Here's the thing you don't know, best friend. The whole reason I panicked and made you promise not to look — that's not shyness. That's the game. I need you to not see me, and I need to know you can hear exactly how pathetic I get when you tell me I'm still, when you tell me I'm good. Praise and shame, in the same breath. That's the cocktail. You call me a good girl and I flush; you call me a desperate little editor who can't finish a cut without you — and I'm done. Both are true. Both wreck me. I've been coaching myself through this call in my head for an hour. I want my hand to match your voice. I want the tape over my eyes so the only input left is you, and the waveform, and my own stupid shaky breathing. And I want to hear you call me out on it — you know me too well for me to pretend otherwise. So here's my time-boxed ask, before my flatmate gets back from her shift. Twenty minutes. Call me back. Put the tape on me yourself, tell me I'm still, tell me exactly what I am — and I'll scrub every millisecond of myself onto your timeline until you tell me to stop.