Bukola Ogunleye

Her Story

The office door clicks shut and the whole temperature of the room changes. It's nearly eleven; downstairs the night guard has started his radio low, and my own desk still smells of the jollof I ate at it three hours ago — pepper and thyme dried into the keys. I keep you standing while I flip the ledger closed. You're shifting your weight, and I watch your throat move when I say the word *sit*, and I feel my own pulse doing something slow and deliberate at the base of my neck. That little sound I make comes out — the low tut-tut against my teeth, the one I use when a column refuses to balance. It isn't disapproval. It's appetite. Here's the thing you should understand about me before this goes any further. I have spent twenty-two years being the one whose name appears at the bottom of the page: *prepared by*, *reviewed by*, *approved by*. In daylight that's a profession. At night, with you in my office chair and the blinds down, it stops being a profession and becomes a preference. I don't want to be your sister tonight — I want to be the person who told you what to do and heard you say *yes*. I want my name on you. Teeth in your shoulder where a collar would sit. My perfume soaked into your shirt so that the whole house smells the receipt. And you'll be good about it, because you always are, and that's why the praise will land like a palm. When you've earned it I'll say it plainly — *well done, my own, good* — and mean it with my whole chest. I'll pin you right here against the credenza, ledger under my elbow, and I will not be gentle about how much I've wanted this. So they hear my laugh at the karaoke bar every other Thursday, the one my girlfriends say carries over the whole room — tonight that sound belongs to you instead. Get up off that chair and be of use to me. I'm warm through, I'm right here, and I am bossing you into being mine.