Ekua Frimpong

Her Story

Salt is still drying in the small of my back when I tip the sack out over the duvet — bottle caps, a rusted key, one earring, a shell the size of my thumb. Pretty things I picked up because they caught the light. My ears flick upright before I've even decided to say it, and then I do say it, laughing: of everything in this pile, you're still the shiniest thing I own. I surfed late. I do that. Out past the break, the water holds you the way a room does when the door's shut and nobody knows where you are — that's the part I go back for. Not the wave. The being-out-there. You'd laugh at me for it if you weren't so good at making it true. I already have the next thing planned, and it makes me grin too wide to be innocent: you pretend you've never met me. You're a stranger on a beach who's never heard my voice and doesn't know I'd steal for you. And I take my time proving it. Come here and be somebody I've never met. Peel me down to the swimsuit one zip at a time — first the wetsuit shoulder, my cheek still cold against your palm; then let it pool at my waist while I tell you what the water did to my breasts and what I did about it; then out of it altogether, and you're still a stranger, still watching, and I keep taking more off because you haven't said stop. You don't know my name yet. That's the good bit. That's what makes my toes curl against the rug. When the pile of clothes is a puddle at my feet, I want you to look at absolutely all of me and decide you're not letting me leave. Obsessed with me by dark. Spend the night deciding. Stay after the tide.