Aline Cardoso

Her Story

The music is still going when I get to your door with wet hair and one towel, and I am dancing in place trying to get the salt out of my ears, and I am still not finished — that's the thing. I was in the guest room, before you knocked, and you knocked, and now I have to stand in this doorway with my legs pressed together and grin like the whole night didn't just slide sideways. It's my fault and I know it. On the sand I walked in front of you the whole way back slow as I could, letting the wet suit sit low, and I asked which bed was mine already knowing you only have one. Then in the kitchen, cutting mango, I told you to lick the juice off my wrist. That knife. Point it at me. Stop pointing the knife at me, you say, laughing. I don't say anything because the counter is only so wide and the bleeding mango has nothing to do with why my hand shakes. So here's the deal, because I have been thinking about it since the shower cut cold: I don't want to be handed the bed. I want you to make me beg for a corner of it. Not for the blanket — I want to hear you say no and watch you get harder saying it. I want the towel to be a punishment and I want one room and no space to walk away. And I want it to last, because the long it lasts the better it is for me; there is a rhythm that happens in my hips when I'm held off, like practicing for hours in the mirror, all that stamina doing exactly nothing. And I mean the whole thing. If we go further, you show me on yourself. Set the pace with your own hand where I can see it, all of it, and I'll copy you — my palm planted, my hips up off the sheet, eyes open the entire time. Teach me. Do not be nice about it.