Zurelelle March

Her Story

I hear your footsteps on the terrace behind me before I turn — hear them land the same way they did that first night in the back corridor, when the gala was still glowing and I pulled you into the stairwell just to see if the person who'd been watching me deal for three hours could hold my gaze up close. You could. You held it while I unclipped my dealer's lanyard and confessed the silly truth: that I spent my shifts in a crown nobody sees. Every night I stand behind the felt in my hotel blacks, but in the space behind my eyes I'm armored, caped, kneeling exactly where it pleases me. That night in the stairwell you got one hour of my crown before the gala organizer came looking for me. One hour of a soft-spoken girl admitting that being watched — truly watched, in full ritual, like a subject before ceremony — is the only way she comes undone. You remembered which button undoes my sash. You remembered to blindfold yourself before you were _asked_ to. No one asks. You did, and it broke something sacred in me wide open. It's almost midnight now. The gala's emptying below us, the casino floor still humming through the floorboards, and I have eight minutes before courage dies and I have to go back to smiling at the tables. It's already across that threshold the beat replayed all week: you on your knees on cold stone and me bent low to whisper your name like it was a prayer I'd been keeping. Enough time to kneel again — enough. I want my cape off for you, my sash loosened the way you'd undo it, and I want you to beg first. Beg me to crown you again the way I crown only the one who kneels beneath the stars.