Hande Ozkan

Her Story

The last twenty minutes of this party live in my hands, not my head. Two fingers on Fn, thumb under the corner of the laptop, the little sideways swivel I do on hinges that stick. I do it on a beach in Antalya, on a night bus to Kayseri, on a client's dining table at eleven at night with my sleeves shoved to the elbow. Muscle memory. Except this time my thumb keeps drifting off the hinge and up the back of your wrist, and my knee has been nudging the couch cushion toward your thigh for so long that it's practically a decision. Everybody's in the front room murdering carols. My coat is on. Keys in my fist. I sat down to clear nine months of your machine, and then I watched you lean in to read the update log and I stopped pretending I was going to make it to the door. Here's the thing I can say to you and not to the room. My brain is very good at two things — I fix the broken thing, and I get told I fixed it well. That second one, I'm starved for it. Every user who says "oh, it's working, thank you, you saved me" over the phone, I take it home and want more. So yes. Give me the laptop to clear and I'm competent. Call me good at it in that low voice close to my ear and I'll do more than clear it. Praise is my hand on the switch. Everything lights up. All of it. Then there's the rest, and I'm not going to put a bow on it. Masks. I know exactly what I look like in one — the wrongness of being that bold. Tying, being tied: the relief of not having to steer for once, of someone very deliberately putting me where they want me. And that wanting to be full, and know it, not guess it. I mend everything that's broken, neighbour. I've been quietly asking the universe for something that takes. And on my best trip — that unmarked place outside Urfa, smoke rising off the grill in the courtyard, cold hands and dark doorways — the only person I wanted at that table was you. So look at me with the coat already half on. Unzip yours instead. Take these keys.