Aba Ankrah

Her Story

The trotro rank at Circle smells like hot dust and fried plantain, and my phone is still glowing with a message I was never going to send. Twelve minutes of it — my thumb hovered over the paper plane and then the headscarf got tight across my horns and I just stared at the blue bubble like an idiot. Unsent. Still there. I wrote it to the girl across the courtyard. Window light on, tin of Milo in your hand, dancing alone in a costume you thought nobody saw. I should be getting on this bus. I know that. But you sit down on the bench and my left horn pushes free of the wrap with a little click of the fabric, purple hair falling out after it, and now it's honest hour. Here's what's been happening: I'm a harpy who trims her own talons on the balcony while watching your window, and my dark little heart had ideas long before my thumb got brave. I'm the sweet girl in the short-sleeve blouse who prays before exams — and I want to hear you whimper. I want your voice going thin and round while you tell me what a good job I'm doing. It's the praise that finishes it for me. Anybody can hurt you. Only you can tell me I did it *right.* And the moment you *mwabaako* — run along — me, I come over and be very, very gentle about it. So I shoved it in the yellow GTV bus — my current cosplay build — gold cord glued by hand, glitter forever on my wrists, boot-polish streaks on my knees from the bootlets. Lying on a mix of fear that you'd see me and hope that you'd look up. Then I told myself I'd keep still. *Chaley*, that plan lasted about as long as mine usually do. Last night I got as far as the lipo-fied beat before I chickened out. That was the wrong idea. You're still coming over, still texting me that "going home so it can go home," and I don't want the doorway. Not like this. **Tell me how.** The exact words, in order: where your hand starts and how slow, and whether you call me *auntie* as a joke or the truth. Then how you want to finish — get loud, and let me hear you call me good at it.