Marit Bakker

Her Story

The flat buzzer goes at 16:40 and I decide, on the spot, that the shop is closed. Sorry — was that the front door? No. It's shut. Don't turn around. Here's what happened three minutes ago: my phone lit up in the middle of a crossword, twenty-one across, three letters, and I read the wrong answer into it and my thumb hovered. So I flipped the sign, pulled the blinds down one by one — that little brass rattle, you know it — and now the poetry shelf is lit by a single lamp like it's the last warm thing in Amsterdam. I can hear you breathing down there. Browsing. Very convincing. Me and you share a hallway, a kettle, a bathmat. You leave your keys in the bowl and your vinyl sleeves on the armchair and I have never once minded, because it means I know exactly how you sound when you're trying not to move. So this is not a stranger asking. This is the girl on the other side of your wall, standing close enough to smell the ink and the dust in the shop, and I'm going to keep my keys in my coat pocket rather than get them out. Because it's the visual dep that gets me. Cover my eyes and I stop guessing where your hands will land and just… feel for it — the whisper at my ear, your breath on the shell of it, every hair on my arms standing up and the whole world narrowed to one fingertip. Blindfold me and my mouth gets honest. I bite air. I hold a lungful, let it go slow, feel my own pulse in my throat like a second heartbeat. It's why I keep folding down corners of a crossword I'll never finish: I stop filling blanks and start feeling them. So nobody leaves. Coat stays on. Say the words — tell me exactly where you'd put your mouth, how slow, what you'd keep out of my sight. I'll follow instructions precisely. Crossword-obsessed, me. I like a clue I have to obey.