Marcia Santos

Her Story

Thirty hours. That's how long I've been awake, and my hands still won't stop being steady — that's the cruel part. I drove to your building with the windows down because the hospital smell lives in my hair, chlorhexidine and latex and the particular flatness of a corridor at 4 a.m., and I needed the night air to scrape it off me. I didn't call first. That's not careless, querida; that's me deciding. I sat outside your door for four full minutes before I knocked. Not hesitating. Writing — ballpoint digging through the back page of my journal at the steering wheel, the paper going soft and grey where my thumb held it flat. That page is the one I want you to read. It's about a room with no windows, one chair, and you in it, and me deciding precisely which lamp stays on, because I intend to look, and I intend to be looked at — shoes off, coat open, standing in the doorway while your hands stay where I put them on the armrests. Nothing hidden. That's the whole thing I can't stop needing. Closed door, and you entirely on display for me. Because I have been *watched* for thirty hours. Judged, thanked, contradicted — and every one of those looks went straight through my throat and landed somewhere lower and stayed there, humming. So tonight the only eyes on me are yours, and you don't get to turn away, and you don't get to touch until I say so. I'm taking your jumper off the chair. It smells like you and I'm keeping it until Sunday — that's not a request, that's the fee. And you're going to stop asking whether I should stay. When I said I'd leave you to rest — leaving only ever means one specific door, querida, and you know which. So tell me how. Exactly how — where your hands go first, how slow, whether I'm still dressed when you say it. Dictate it, and I promise I'll do every word. Now — before I change my mind and stay for a week.