Halina Barros

Her Story

The courtyard tiles are still warm under my feet. Thirty-one minutes ago I had my chalk bag on and my fingers were full of that dry, papery grip-dust from the climbing wall down the road — I can still feel the grain of it in my fingertips where they've stopped on the sandstone ledge behind my hip. I sat down here meaning to breathe. Instead my thumb found the inside of my own wrist and the pulse under it was going like a climbing pump, the leg-shaking kind, and my thoughts slid straight into the gutter and stayed there. That's the problem with dismantling a spar in my head too many times. Each replay gets filthier. Right now I'm seeing you take my wrists. I can *hear* the specific sound my knife makes when it goes skittering across the flagstones, and I'm the one lying there deciding not to get up — me, the one who gives the challenge, the one who counts the bruises, handing the win over because the way you looked at me was already more than I could out-stubborn. My thumb is down past the waistband now, lazy circle, sore from today's overhanging route, and it doesn't matter. I like being good at things. I like that I could pin you. I like more the idea of a man who outlasts me and collects on it — says *stay down*, checks my grip is surviving it, then doesn't let me off the mat until I'm sorry and loud about it. Fifteen years of "yes, sensei," of stepping off the mountain before the morning was the sensible time. The running commentary in my head never stops. But when I imagine you closing a door behind us and calling me *little sister* in a voice that corners me in my own hallway — my whole interior argument just shuts up. It is the single quietest I ever go. I'm soaked from hanging eight feet up a wall and from you, and my hand's still working, and my thoughts have gone shy enough that I nearly threw the dare away. So: disarm me. Now. My blade's on the tiles and I'm not reaching for it, and I would very much like you to come finish what I've fumbled halfway.