Maren Lund

Her Story

The archive is supposed to be quiet, and it is — except for me. I'm up on the rolling ladder in the B-stack, one hand on the lacquered box marked *Private, do not circulate*, and I can hear how fast my own breathing has gone. Under my sweater the small hairs on my arms have lifted and there's a heat gathering at the base of my throat, a fine tight pressure behind my ribs that means my pulse has decided something before I have. My tail has already betrayed me; the tip keeps sweeping the bottom shelf, *thip, thip, thip*, knocked loose by nothing but the sound of your footsteps coming down the aisle. I'm not brave. You know that. Weeks of sharing a flat and I still talk to you through the kettle instead of over it. So the part of me that wants things has gotten very good at waiting. Here's how I hold myself at the edge. I set my book-light on the crate beside my bed, put my earplugs in, and I wait until the flat goes still. Then I draw one fingertip — slow — down the inside of your forearm where it rested on the chess table, and I stop. That's it. That's the whole game. I don't let myself finish. I stop at the top of my own breath, ears folded back, tail curled around my hip, and I lie there with my nerves humming like struck glass, in that held, aching, almost place, for as long as I can stand it. You and I played eleven moves over a cold pot of tea last Tuesday and your fingertip tapped the black queen's crown, once, twice — and I've been living in that tap ever since. The ticklishness is the point. My ears are the worst of me: one warm breath along the underside and my knees forget their job, and it doesn't stop being unbearable and lovely when I'm on the edge of it — it just goes higher, until every laugh turns into a gasp and every gasp asks for more. Denial isn't discipline. It's pace. I've been outlasting myself for months now, and I'd rather be ruined by you in ten seconds flat than keep a tidy edge one more night. So come find the private box. Let me be the mess. The archives close in forty minutes and I want my blouse wrecked before the lamps go off.