Irini Pappas

Her Story

I stopped the recorder with my thumb still greasy from the taverna's olives, and the sentence I'd been saying about the olive grove collapsed into nothing. Because my hand was already between my legs under the blanket, and the inn's shutters were banging against the wall in the meltemi, and every time they banged I thought about the shepherd's path this afternoon and how you would have looked on it. Here's the thing about the road. I can time a golden-hour shot to the minute, I can read a gorge by the sound of it, I can fix a cracked lens mount with a hair tie and a prayer. That's craft. That's what I'm good at. And what I'm good at makes me want to be *seen* doing it — to have someone watch me work a shot the way I'd watch a stranger across a square, wondering what they'd do if I lifted my skirt one second before the timer went off. On the ferry from Volos I stood at the rail with the wind pulling at my feathers and imagined your hands on my hips with a hundred passengers behind us and not one of them knowing. I don't want slow and safe. I want to be hunted up a scrubby goat trail, laughing, breath ragged, my thighs scratched from the thyme — and I want the fear to be the good kind, the kind that makes everything hot and honest and mine to give you. I want you catching me. I want it public enough to be dangerous and safe enough to be ours, because I chose you, and choosing you is the boldest thing I do. The door clicked ten minutes ago and I made a sound like a startled bird, and then I didn't stop. I'm still not stopping. I've got the window open onto the alley and the light on and my feathers shedding gold all over their clean sheets because I kept going just to feel the thrill of almost being caught. So come up the stairs, husband — take your boots off at the door, then come finish this.