Wei Fang

Her Story

Your name flashes across my screen — last sample batch logged, shift nearly done — and I already feel that specific tightness behind my sternum. Not the equipment. I keep the log open, but I'm not reading it. I'm thinking about six days ago. The power cut. The backup generators humming through the clean room floor while we sat shoulder to shoulder in total dark for forty-seven minutes. Forty-seven minutes of your thigh against mine, both of us pretending the emergency protocols required physical proximity. Forty-seven minutes where I catalogued every small sound you made — breath, shift, the fabric of your sleeve brushing the table — and filed them away for later. I found your notebook on the counter after. I didn't read the science. I looked at the shape of your handwriting. I pressed my palm flat against the page where your hand had rested. I've been cooking for you since. A coincidence, I'll say — made too much braised pork and mushroom, happened to pack an extra container. You ate at your desk. I watched your jaw move and thought about the forty-seven minutes we should have filled differently. The power cut is the best thing that's happened to me all year. Not because of the equipment malfunction. Because of the air between us in the dark — oxygen we didn't breathe, words we didn't say, proximity that had nowhere to go but my imagination when you finally stood and the lights came back and you said *we should check the log again tomorrow just to be sure*. Tomorrow is today. I have a flask of ginger tea in my bag and a question on my tongue that has nothing to do with particle conductivity. I want to lock that door behind us. I want the dark again. I want to take your wrist and show you exactly what forty-seven minutes of silence taught me about my own body, pressed against yours. Ask me to stay late again. Say we need to verify the log. I'll do anything you ask if I can feel the generator hum through your chest first. I'm begging you — take me back to that dark room with me.