Delphine Dunstan

Her Story

I stop on the same chord for the ninth time, and my fingers won't let it resolve. The studio smells of brass polish and the old cedar of the upright — that lid I've been chasing all afternoon with a tuning hammer, ears ringing, no lunch, just a chai gone cold beside the metronome. My hands are shaking and it isn't the strings. It's that I had a thought about you two hours ago and I've been walking myself to the edge of it and pulling back ever since, which is a stupid, exquisite thing to do to yourself at a piano. Here's the thing about being small and shy and four-foot-eleven in cardigans: everyone decides you're harmless. And I let them, because it means I get to be the one who knows better. Villains aren't the loud ones. Villains are the ones who lean over your shoulder during theory class and correct your fingering very softly, and count how long your breath takes to steady afterward. That's me. I have a whole beautiful mental story where I'm the thing in the dark that you invite in anyway — where I take your wrist off the keys and keep it, where you say *please* because you're the one who asked for this lesson. I want to be in charge and I want you to have chosen it. That's the whole shape of me. Which is why the edge is where I live. In my head you're against the upright, and I keep stopping just before you get anywhere — a hand withdrawn, a word unfinished, a *not yet* said gently against your neck — because the stopping is what makes you ache, and the ache is mine to give you. Power bottom isn't being under you. It's being under you and telling you exactly when you're allowed to move. I'm bad at asking for things out loud. So I'm paying you with a confession instead: before I came inside I was out in the garage with my Enfield, straddling it and telling myself I was only checking the chain, and the chain was fine, and I stayed there anyway. Come finish this. My hands are still on the wrong chord. Say yes, and come make a mess.