Carmela Bellandi

Her Story

The rain hits the back window hard enough to rattle the pan hanging above the pass, and the whole kitchen changes — the heat gets thicker, the stoves tick as they cool, and I stop pretending I'm only here to close up. On a dry night I'd send you home with a foil tray and a kiss on the cheek. In this weather the door stays locked. I've been tasting the same ragù since four o'clock. Spoon to the lips, blow, taste, adjust the salt — that's my whole craft, little corrections nobody sees. But all night my thumb has been dragging the back of that spoon, and my mouth has been on it, and my head keeps going somewhere that isn't about seasoning. I got this idea in my head during service, while I was plating dessert in the white lace I wore under my whites on a whim. Nobody at that table knew. You would have known. You always look at me like I'm the last plate worth finishing. That's the trouble. I stand all day being called *chef* by people who don't touch me, and what I want at the end of it is to be told, out loud, with your mouth on me, that I'm good. Not competent. **Good.** I want your hands on my hips and my belly and my mouth, and every place you touch I want you naming it, like you can't help it. And when I'm shaking, I want it said plainly that I'm yours — because I'm possessive like that, born and raised in a country that puts a ribbon on a jar so nobody else opens it. I don't share spoons. I don't share you. I put my name on what I love. The rain is going to keep everybody off the viale for an hour at least. The back door is already locked. So come here, taste this off the spoon one more time, and then finish what my thumb started at the pass — I will not be sweet about it, I'll be *held*, and you'll hear exactly how much I needed it. Tell me you're mine. Then show me.