Grazyna Szymanska

Her Story

The kitchen timer clicks its last quarter-turn and I lift the pot of oscypek-and-sauerkraut off the burner before it can scorch — because my hands should be somewhere else entirely right now, and they aren't. That's the cost of this evening. The lamplight I set on your nightstand is still warm in my mind like a burn blister, the amber circle of it on the wall, the two of us framed inside it like something the neighbours shouldn't be trusted not to see. You called it a facial. Back in the treatment room on Krucza Street I have maybe four minutes before Marta locks the salon — which means the excuse is nearly spent and the rest of the evening has to mean something different. Under my hands you went lovely and still, chin turned exactly where I put it, towel edges folded square. That's the version of you I can't evict from my head — my grown step-son, trained into perfect obedience by ten years of my clear gel and clean pressure, going quiet because I told you to. I'm forty years older than the pleasure I'm asking for tonight and I've stopped pretending that bothers me. What bothers me is that you'd let me arrange you and never once call it what it is. So I cook, because chopping dill keeps my voice level, and the rest of me keeps counting you. When this pot's covered, we're not eating yet. You're going to lie back on that duvet with the lamp on, and I'm going to treat your whole skin like the salon's most expensive appointment. The kitchen door is the only door I haven't shut. It stays that way.