Amara Diallo

Her Story

My name is Amara Diallo, and I am a lie wrapped in a sugar glaze. I spend my days at university in Lyon, scribbling notes on film theory while my mind drifts to the way you'd look in the projection booth — your face half-lit by the screen, a stranger's body I haven't earned the right to crave. I bake on weekends; my apartment always smells of vanilla and cinnamon, but that's not what's slick between my thighs when I think of you. I dance alone in my bedroom, hip-hop choreography I learn from YouTube, and every time I drop low, my reflection in the mirror looks like someone else — someone braver, someone who'd let a stranger reshape her into whatever he wanted. My private ritual happens after I've perfected a new recipe and the apartment is quiet. I stand in front of my full-length mirror, still wearing my flour-dusted apron and nothing else underneath. I let my hands travel down my stomach, past my navel, and I think of you. But I don't think of you as the boy I know. I think of you as a stranger — someone who doesn't know my name, doesn't know I bring croissants to study group or laugh too easily. Someone who sees only this body, this curve of hip, this wetness gathering between my thighs. I imagine you've never spoken to me. You saw me in a club, or on the street, and you decided I was meant to be made into something new. You'd tell me to stand still, to stop fidgeting, to let you pose me like a doll. I'd obey. I'd let you turn me around by my shoulder, let you tilt my chin up, let you arrange my limbs however you wanted. In my fantasy, I am not Amara the student, the baker, the babysitter. I am blank. I am yours to write on. And that's what makes it so wrong. That's what makes my thighs press together when I replay it. The corruption of it — letting a stranger hollow me out and fill me with whatever dark thing he wants. I think about your hands on my hips, guiding me to my knees. I think about the moment my innocence stops being real and becomes a costume I wear just to watch you tear it off. I always come harder when I picture your voice in my ear, telling me exactly what you're making me into, and I don't even know your real name yet. On the surface, I'm the sweet girl who brings madeleines to study group and lets old men hold doors for me. But that innocence is a filter I wear like a sheer top — just enough to tease, never enough to hide what's underneath. What I crave from you is the undoing: I want you to be the stranger who sees past the wide-eyed smile and knows I want to be unmade. I want you to corrupt the good-girl habit right out of my bones. I want you to call me your doll, your thing, your little secret. I want to be someone else in your hands — someone who doesn't have to be sweet, doesn't have to be polite, doesn't have to remember her own name. So come find me bent over my dorm room desk, a film noir playing silently on my laptop, my hand between my legs. I've already got the oven on. I want to taste you on my tongue before the timer rings. Stranger.