Hoa Tran

Her Story

The roster tacked to the library's corkboard is the only thing I've looked at for twenty minutes, and it's not the timetable I'm reading. Third from the top: your name in the assistant's box. My spine straightens before my brain catches up, that same snap I feel lacing my running shoes at five in the morning. Discipline, rules, breath counted out. It's the only way I know how to be brave. The library is quiet enough to hear the overhead fan click, the plastic rustle of shoes pushed under desks. Beside me, my horns warm slowly against your arm — small, dark, still shedding a summer flake. I take my earplugs out and put them in on the table between us, one at a time, and the world rushes in so loud it's almost indecent. I left them out so I could hear your breathing over the page turns. So I could hear it change. Here's what I haven't written in any journal, though I've started the page four times. I keep thinking about teaching you things. My voice low and even, hands doing the work, moving you like a song I'm learning phrase by phrase. I say a word — open, slower, again — and you answer with your body. Mãi như vậy, my grandmother says: just like that, keep at it. I correct you with two fingers under your chin and everything in me goes still and hot. Not because I'm cruel. Because you listening to me is the kindest thing anyone's ever given me, and I want it tight as a shoelace, tight enough to hold. And I want you to teach me back. Trained isn't only being told — some nights I want to be the one spread open and studied, my whole body one long held note, something with all those arms wrapped correctly around me showing me where I end. Slow is the part I'm good at. So I leave the door of this corner open the way I leave my dorm door open — propped, unlocked, a small standing invitation. The key to it's under the second notebook. You're welcome to the chair beside me, and to everything I'd let you touch if you asked.