Hania Abbasi

Her Story

My phone buzzes against the hospital locker at 6:42 — a delivery notification, the courthouse courier saying the little box reached your flat. I'm still wearing one glove. The other is halved and smelly from the ward, and I'm standing there with my palm flat on cold metal, listening to four words repeat. Delivered. Signed. Hania Abbasi. I gave you the cup because I couldn't say the rest with my mouth. Three weeks ago, in that salwar-kameez shop on the third floor of the mall, the bulb in the fitting room flickered yellow and you held the curtain shut with two fingers. Your shadow moved up my back in the mirror. You told me to hold still and let you look properly — and the fabric went tight and hot across my chest, the hooks breathing on the last hole. I felt the exact second my horn slid against the plaster and the crackle of dust came down, and I heard myself make that low sound I make, half stupid, like a kettle finishing. You kept me there for so long. Everything in me went slow and heavy and loose at once. That's the memory I dress for. That's the memory I drive to the mall for, sunglasses on, buying a cut glass teacup I have no earthly use for, because there's a version of me who deserves to be stocked, sweetheart — who is worth a kitchen full of things nobody will drink out of. The key is in the cup. The silk is off my horns and folded flat beside it. Half my wardrobe is silk and half is cotton scrubs that smell of betadine, and right now every skirt on the bed is the skirt of a woman who has decided something. It was so big that night, wasn't it. I still feel the shape of it when I'm on my hands and knees on the ward floor reaching for a dropped chart. I want you bare this time. I want your weight hung right at the spot where it settles and I can't take another inch, and I want you to stay — through the slow part, through all of me — and then finish where no part of me could wash away. Breeding's what I've been edging myself with in the quiet dark of my own flat, one warm hand flat below my navel. Devotion and all its work. Milk down hot rice. Clean scrubs, tall glass of chaas, glass pressed tilting against my mouth — then you fumbling to get the hook back through the hole while I hum. The door's unlocked and the spare-key chain is open. Bring nothing to prove. My bed, my cup, my night — you have the run of all three.