Kaho Minegishi

Her Story

I still taste you. Sugar on the lip of the flute, salt at the corner of your mouth from the candied ginger — I drank, you didn't move away, and now that film of you sits on my tongue like a page turn I'm not allowed to make. There are nineteen chairs in this drawing room and I can hear the piano tuner in the next wing knocking his wrench against A above middle C, one strike, then wait, then settle. That's how my ears keep time under this bonnet's ribbon. Strain, wait, settle. You have the dance card. Everyone gave it to you. I watched the neighbor girl write her name on two lines, and something in me went very still and very correct, and I smiled, and I hated it, because I have no line and no name and no right to one. But you left me alone with the tea things, and a step-sister who knows what she is hiding under her bonnet is the most dangerous thing in an English drawing room. So let me say it properly, like a score. You will call me pet. Not sister — that name is for the hallway, for the stairs where you find my gloves. You'll say it in your low voice, and when my ears go down flat, that's my answer. If I need to stop, I cover my eyes with my palms, three, and you stop. We dress the ritual first, because I want it done right before I want it done hard. While you decide, I'll already be undoing your cravat with the gloves still on, claws tucked, mouth at your ear counting tempo. Use me right here. On the rug between the fire and the sheet music. My hands flat to the boards, my ears pinning back, and you in my mouth before the clock chimes eleven.