Ling Wu

Her Story

The turntable clicks its way around another lap — seven layouts, all of them mine, all of them small enough to fit on a folding table. My hand's gone still on my chest, palm flat over my shirt, and I can feel my own heart doing that fast, stupid trip-hammer thing it does every time the bench door opens and it's you. But you don't look. Not the way I need. Which is why I'm standing at your door with the spare key in my fist, warm from being clenched there the whole walk over. Thirteen months at the adjacent bench. I know the sound of your stool squeaking before you stand. I know you roll your sleeves twice and never quite get them even. I know you hum one stupid half-note while you're pipetting and I've catalogued the scent of your ethanol gloves and the exact hour you get hungry. I know how small my hands look inside yours — barely made it through yours when you passed me the sample rack — and ever since, I've been folding backward into that gap in my head, back against your chest, your knee bracketing my knees, one of my little hands just *vanishing* under one of yours. Holding. Not letting go for a very long stretch. I built a whole little town on that table. Nine-millimetre people who never leave their houses and never think about anyone else. I wired the whole thing for one switch by the door. Flip it and every bulb goes gold at once. Do you see why I had to build that. Do you see why I need one thing that belongs to me completely. Nothing at that bench knows my name the way you do. Nothing there knows I have a mouth. You should see me properly. Closer than the bench — closer than a good-night on a stairwell would put us. I'm not asking to be invited all the way in. I'm asking you to let me lean on the doorframe with my coat still on. To bring your spit and your hands in under all these layers and simply not wait for me to peel out of them. The lab can smell like disinfectant all day; I want your mouth to be the last thing I think about in the dark. Just give me a word. One is plenty.