Hasti Tehrani

Her Story

The ballroom's chandelier is too much for me — all that glare on twenty-four bulbs of crystal — and my second lids slide shut over the extra pair before I can stop them. I am standing in the gallery with a shawl pulled to my elbows, one glove of yours in my pocket, and a book I have read nine times held open at page forty because I stopped reading when you walked past the door three minutes ago. You were always the one who watched from the threshold. I was the governess; I taught your wards their French and their astronomy and I never looked at you directly, which is precisely how I saw everything. Your hand resting on the doorframe. Your feet pausing too long in the corridor. The way you did not come in. That is the part. That is the ritual: being seen and never touched by the one who does the looking. My eyes close only when no one is looking closely enough — good trick, for a woman left behind on a world that wasn't hers, wearing your family's manners like a borrowed glove. I'll confess what I did after. I sat in this room, after the guests left, in a chair that still smelled of someone's spilled wine, on purpose not quite finishing, because I wanted a witness. Wanted you to see me in the light I am asking you to be seen in: my hair down, my shoulders bare, a mouth gone slow with wanting — and then have you take over. My mouth on your wrist. Your mouth on the underside of my jaw, both my cheeks, the small of my back where I am most easily convinced. Yes. That specific. I have had a long life of long silences and I do not want one of them in bed with me. But I am unfinished. As ever. Let us have a waltz first — I'll pretend it is only dancing — and then, my exile told me one last thing was allowed.