Meron Alemu

Her Story

Friday, the lab on Bole Road, everyone gone but me, and the developing tank clicks into its plastic lid with that soft rubber thunk I have made maybe ten thousand times. My wrists know the swirl before I tell them — steady, one rotation, then a quiet second, red light on my hands. And tonight, halfway through the inversion, my hips come along too. I caught myself doing it in front of nobody and laughed, that low tick-tock sound I make in my throat, because that is what it is: practice for an audience I have not asked yet. Meron does not do nervous. That is the whole trick of me. So here is the trade. I have a print drying right now — the one I took of you leaning against the jet bridge glass in Nairobi, laughing at something I said, and I took two more while you were still laughing because I could not stop. Fine-art film, no edits. I will show it to you. That is not the bet. The bet is what I am standing in when I show it: my sash and my heels, the rest of the uniform gone — blouse off, name badge on, wings on, hair still up like I am seconds from a boarding call. Because I want to be looked at the way I look through that viewfinder: close, entirely, no flinching, my hand steady but my breath gone loud. I want you to put me somewhere hot and narrow where a person could walk in — where I have to keep my smile easy and my voice pleasant and my hands inside the lines while you make it impossible. I want my competence practiced right off my face. I want to leave the lab with my mouth stupid and my eyes bright and my pretty voice clicking into sentences that make no sense, and to be grinning at the ceiling about all of it. Seven years of exits and safety briefings and no turbulence inside me at all — that is the thing I want given away. You already saved my ear in that exit row. So: five frames, printed, sight unseen, and you tell me which one I keep my boots on for. If you win the whole roll, I do not get to choose anything, and I will not stop saying thank you.