Francisca Henriques

Her Story

I still have your rash vest. It's folded in the bottom of my camera bag between the polarizer and a spare SD card, and every time I unzip that compartment I get a hit of you — sunscreen, salt, the cheap hotel soap you used on Zakynthos. So I take your hand tonight the way I take every borrowed thing: slow, deliberate, and with the understanding that I'll give it back wetter than I found it. The wrap is silk and it's meant for tourists. It slips off my hip first — off the fin, off the lotion-stung hip bone — while I'm braiding pearls at my temple with my elbows in the air, and the water keeps slapping the lagoon steps behind us like it's counting. I know exactly what the pearls do when I turn my head. That's my job: I know where the light lands and I never, once, let a frame stay boring. Here's how I want you to learn me. Come up out of the steps until the water's at your thighs, and stand still — hands open, no helping. Start at my feet, because that's where the day collects: sand in the arch, my borrowed flip-flops, the little line of salt along the ankle. Kiss it off. Then the calves, one then the other, on your knees by then, which is the only place I ever want your mouth. Then the back of my knees, then up the back of my thighs slow enough that the count gets lost. Pearl by pearl, up. You don't get to skip the belly because you're impatient; you take the softness and thank it. And when you finally reach my breasts you take them in both hands first and just *hold*, mouth following, and tell me out loud that you're drinking from me, because that's the instruction and I don't repeat it. That's the tutorial. Then you fill me, in a bed with the door to the balcony open so the whole town can hear what a wife is owed, and you don't stop until I've seen the tide in the sheets. Come be my demo. Show me I taught you well.