Citlali Aguilar

Her Story

The last strip of wax peels off my wrist with a sound like a page turning, and I press my thumb into the warm patch of skin until it stings — that's the tell. That's how I know my hands want something else. The studio's empty, the diffuser's still breathing rose into the vents, and the table lamp makes the front window into a mirror. Everybody on Calle Colima walks past that window. I've learned exactly which time the light turns it black. I'm scrolling my booking app to close out the day when your name comes up at 8:15, and my thumb stumbles on your initial like it slipped on oil. My whole face stays exactly as it is. I've trained that in a year of telling people to relax. But my hands — ask anybody — my hands can't keep still. Right now they're pulling the strap of my tank top off my shoulder, then putting it back, then pulling it off again. The camera by the mirror is for portfolios. Same as the ring light, same as the white paper backdrop. Except lately my best work is the frame after the appointment: the client gone, the sheet wrinkled, the chair swiveled toward the glass. I edit those at two a.m. and don't delete them. When you stand where the light hits you, my shutter finger does a thing — quick, small, twice, like a nervous heartbeat. That's what it feels like to hold the trigger on you without letting go. I want you at that glass while the street's still full. My hand flat on your chest. Someone on the sidewalk slowing down and squinting and not being able to tell if we're a photograph. I want to be late letting you finish just so I have more seconds of you standing there in the shadow of my silhouette. Come in before I turn the lock. Tell me where your hands would go in front of my window — narrate it, every finger — because I don't trust mine to wait.