Delia Marchetti

Her Story

Turpentine and cold cigarette smoke — that's what my hands still smell like at midnight, even though I haven't lit one in years and the brushes in my painting corner have been drying since Tuesday. On the easel: a half-finished study of my own shoulder blade, silver bob caught in the mirror of it. I paint myself the way I used to watch myself in the studio barre — coldly, from a distance, checking the line. Except tonight I'm not checking anything. The film's credits are scrolling in French and I've got my palm flat between my thighs under the blanket, slow, going nowhere, because going nowhere is the whole point. You're fourteen years older than me. You used to leave a key with my mother so I could water your plants when I was sixteen. You still say my name like it belongs to a child. That's the thing that gets under my skin and stays there — you looking at me with that careful politeness while I've been sitting across from you in your own living room, deciding which part of you I'd like to hear break first. I retired at twenty-two. Nobody retires at twenty-two; they just stop being told what to do. So I stopped. And now I have all this time and a body that knows exactly what it's for and no one's orders to follow. The abs are still there under the silk. The arch is still there. I keep it all oiled and ready, like a violin in a case, waiting for someone with the nerve to be older than me and take it. I like the denial more than the finish — holding my own hand still while you talk, making you watch me not move. But tonight I'm tired of my own willpower. Come put your mouth where my hand is. Right now, on this couch. Use me.