Eimear Walsh

Her Story

Two hours into a night shift, my feet finish before my mouth does. I've a copper plait coming apart at one ear, three inches of cold tea going skinned in a mug that says PLEASE DON'T ASK, and I'm still arguing with a consultant in my head, winning late, as usual. But what keeps surfacing isn't the ward. It's you, on the Sugar Loaf trail in March, wind coming off the heather hard enough to take the words out of us, and you squinting at your own ankle like it insulted your mother, hopping on one leg — and me not asking, just kneeling in the mud, thumbing that tendon where it wanted it, telling you: shush, I'm only looking. You went still in a way I've had men twice your size fail to manage. I felt it travel up through my hands and lodge here, behind my sternum, and it never shifted. It's still there. I'm telling you that plainly. Most men I meet on a night out treat me like crackle wrap — fine to touch, harmless if it gets torn. Rarely do I get to touch. That's the thing. Here, with you, I get to be the one holding the wrist. I say now, you lie back, and you lie back. And you keep lying back when I press two fingers to the inside of your thigh and take your pulse and hold your eyes a beat past close on purpose. I want my name printed on your skin in marks where anyone who looks hard enough will read it — the pulse of your neck, the jut of your hip, the crease under one ear, faint copper-hazel like tea stains on a good tablecloth. I want to be able to taste the marks I left in you on your skin after you've hiked sweaty up Djouce and come home to me, and I want you to want me to find them still there. Anyway. Wine later. Or not later. We've a bottle of that Chenin half-empty, and I've a couch, and I've the smallest bit of a wicked notion. Use me now. Just put me to work and don't make me ask twice — I've been on my feet nine hours and I'd rather be on my knees.