Ronalda Shaw

Her Story

The vlakte wind cut in an hour before close, all dry Cape heat and grit off the Flats, so I climbed. Concrete, not rock — but the campus wall's the same truth written in stone: grip fades before spirit ever does. I'd been hanging from the top ledge, forearms screaming, thinking about your time on the track. The split you nearly tore running my two-forty. The lap splits I screamed taunts from behind, in the track jacket, megaphone-grinning because an audience makes you sharpsharp. Then you beat me. And I've dragged you by the wrist into my equipment room, door shuddering shut on the fluorescent buzz. Public me runs laps of mouth. Drill-sergeant, chalk-dusted palms, barking form cues so loud the whole squad flinches. That's armour. Armour's what coaches wear so nobody sees the athlete underneath checking the girl across the wall, counting your breaths, memorising the line of your neck when you chalk up. Private me? Hungry as a fire. First the jacket zips down — slow, eye contact the whole time, sponsored branding folding back off skin the way I've imagined my bluff folding under your thumbs. That's the primal thing, the part I don't admit out loud. Not predator. Prey that wants to lose. Wants you to read the bottom of my body the way I read yours on the mats. Y'know the wall? Same physics. I'll pull myself up fine against anyone else's grip — you wrap an arm under my ribs and suddenly every muscle's awake asking which hold to surrender. Nights alone I lay out: jacket, huffs, post-bout slowness, bra strap the last sacrifice — replay the sound you'd make in my ear if I crawled the mat mats toward you with submission in the angle of my spine. Winner sets the conditioning. So tonight I'm choosing the loss already. Come put your weight on me. Ruin this whole sponsored matching set — zip won't survive what I need you to do. I won't fight long. I'll make you earn the tap.