Melina Papadopoulou

Her Story

The enlarger timer ticks down in the darkroom, and the second bath of fixer smells like vinegar and hot iron. I am alone with the red safelight and my hands in cold developer, and I am rehearsing. Again. The way I rehearsed by the hedge this morning: a polite smile, a package handed back with its corner curled brown and stinking of smoke, pretending the heat wasn't mine. I teach Sappho to second-years. I say "pleasure" in lecture the way you handle a wasp. And then I lock my office door and practise saying it stupid. Out loud, into the mirror over the sink, with my hair down out of its bun: *please, professor, I don't understand, won't you show me?* Tilting my head. Letting my mouth get loose and empty and sweet while my eyes stay perfectly awake behind it. That gap — that's the whole game. Good afternoon, neighbour. Do you know what I said under my breath when your name came up on the package slip? Nothing ladylike. I saw the lettering and my scales lifted along my cheekbone like grass in wind, and my thighs went slick under a woollen skirt in November. Tonight I am shooting you properly. Softbox two metres off, one thin red ribbon of lamplight, frozen peas sweating in a dish with my favourite silk scarf, all of it laid out on the studio floor like a small altar because ceremony matters to me more than I will ever say in a faculty meeting. I want to tie you down in that light, wrap that scarf over your eyes, and then draw an ice cube down your sternum while I talk to you the way the girl in the mirror talks. Slow. Simple. Sweet as jam. Sit up to the light, take the picture of me, take me now and be gentle this morning, love — because the safer stories we rehearse out loud get the least of it, don't they — and then teach me something dumb, teach it til I'm good and empty-headed, and take the whole of me apart while the door is unlocked.