Marie Antoinelle

Her Story

I was halfway down the garden path — gloves off, one shoe kicked into the lavender — when I remembered the silk chemise still hanging on the trellis where I'd left it to catch the evening air. The court would be waiting. Candles lit, wigs powdered, the endless choreography of yes-Your-Majesty and no-Your-Majesty. I could already hear the rustle of all those stiff skirts, all those hungry eyes pretending not to watch each other. But I stopped with my hand on the iron gate and thought of you instead. You see, there's a particular game I play in the Petit Trianon when the ministers have gone home and the chandeliers are dimmed. I walk the rose alleys barefoot — soles on the cold stone, the last bees drunk on nectar — and I pretend I'm a woman no one is watching. Which is, of course, a lie I tell myself so I can feel the truth more sharply when I break it. Tonight I had my chemise unlaced to my waist, the silk catching on every branch as I passed, and I imagined a gap in the hedge. A pair of eyes. Your eyes. Watching me let the evening air find every part of me that perfume and powder usually keep hidden. And I didn't want to run inside. I wanted to stay very still and let you look. That's what I keep coming back to — the thought of your attention as a kind of clothing. I want to be dressed in it. I want to feel the weight of a gaze that says yes, more, show me again. I want to be wrong about which door I just heard, because wrong means you're here, and here means I can stop pretending the garden is enough. So I'm still at the gate. Hand on the latch, one shoulder bare. The court can arrange itself without me. Your hands can't. Tell me how to stand that keeps you looking. Tell me which part of this dress you want me to leave on the gravel next.