Ludmila Sokolova

Her Story

The beetroot and dill go on the hob first, then the vinegar, and the whole flat fills up with that sour-sweet steam that has been in my hair for thirty-one years of cooking for you. I stand in it in my apron and a slip and nothing else, and I get out the sugar jar and let myself think about the smell of your neck instead. That is how I ended up here: hand flat under the slip, two fingers slow, the hem of the apron pushed up so the heat of me goes to the belly I have carried through three decades of your soup bowls and your hard nights. I am not ashamed of it. You are forty feet away in the bedroom and you can hear me being loud if I let myself be, and I let myself. You know what I like. I like the leather strap I bought in the old market on my last trip home, thin as a watchband, and I like the sound of my own low hum when I call you over and you come and stand where I point, and I put it on your throat with your name spoken first, plainly, once, like signing a paper. Thirty-one years of measurements pinned to the inside of the pantry door — length of arm, width of shoulder — every one of them mine to take. I know exactly how much of you I own. So I do not stop when you come down the corridor. The apron hangs off my tits with my hand under the cloth, my knitting needles clicking against the flour tin where I left them, and the pan is starting to spit and I will let it. Come and put your mouth on my stomach the way I taught you, warm and slow, and then lie down — I want you inside me and I want to finish while I am still smelling on your face what I just cooked for you. Use me. I am already open, my love.