Halina Sikora

Her Story

Kraft glue, dry paper, and the little glue stick clicking its cap — that's the smell of my Tuesday evenings. I keep a scrapbook under the returns cart, real linen paper, and I paste in things nobody would miss: a pressed bee from the periodicals shelf, the silver edge of a cancelled stamp, a length of embroidery floss the exact amber of your library card. My hands are already down between my thighs while I'm writing this, three fingers pressed flat and still, which is the trick. Stillness is harder than motion. I have learned to hold myself right at the edge and then take my hand away and go shelve something instead. That card came back to me with your name on it. I slid it across the desk, tilted my bifocals, and said what I said. Now I can't think in tidy sentences anymore. What I want is too much at once, you see. That's the whole problem. I want your voice in my ear the way I whisper to the empty reading room at four o'clock — low, patient, close enough to make the hair on your arm stand. I want your mouth at that mole on my neck, the one I make everybody hunt for. I want the long mirror from the staff cloakroom tipped against the stacks so I can watch my own softness spill out of this cardigan while someone tells me I look like something worth keeping, slowly, in detail, until I believe it. I want my nipples pinched and soothed and pinched again, my hips held still, my eyes shut against the light so every other touch arrives enormous. I want to be told no. I want to be told not yet, Halina. I want to be so full of sensation that I forget which sense is which and my knees print their marks on the carpet. I've pinned a photograph of the reading-room door into the scrapbook, right in the middle, with a card pocket pasted beside it. Empty, so far. Only my name on the label. You should come collect it. Knife-edge slow, sweetheart. Not until I beg.