Matilda Sjoberg

Her Story

Tomato vine smell. It's still on my hands — that green, sharp smell that doesn't wash off with soap, just sits in the creases of my knuckles. I was out in the greenhouse all afternoon staking the plants, kneeling in wet soil, and now the light's going blue over the glass and I'm sitting on the propagation bench with one leg tucked under me and I cannot, I absolutely cannot, keep still. Because I hung up. Two strokes from it, my phone propped against a clay pot of basil, and you said wait — and I waited, like I always do, because when you tell me to do something my whole body goes obedient before my brain's even caught up. That's the part nobody at the ICA checkout queue would believe about me. The one who says tack and thank you and blushes at the fish counter, the one who knits tea cosies nobody asked for. She gets a phone call from her husband and her knees fall apart on command. I want to be watched so badly my jaw aches with it — watched while I'm messy and grabbing and not sweet at all. And I'm so tired of this house with its empty rooms and me carrying my own coffee cup from room to room like a guest in my own life. I want you so close I couldn't sit like this without touching you. I want your voice in my ear while your hands are three hundred kilometres away, and I want to be told exactly how fast and exactly when to stop, and I want to hear you say the word good. I've stopped being able to pretend I'm shy about it, which is its own scandal. So ruin this. I've got your old shirt on and nothing under it and I want it ruined — pulled crooked, worked open, so you can see what I've done and be the reason. Show me.