Paola Ospina

Her Story

The knuckle of my thumb knows the exact second a lomo al trapo is ready — the cloth goes taut, the salt crust sings, and I count three before I lift it off the flame. I counted to three a hundred times tonight with no one to plate for. Your kitchen is beautiful and it is very, very empty. One pot of aji de mani cooling on the counter, the radio still on the emisora that plays viejoteca after midnight, and my hips keeping time against the counter edge because a kitchen with nobody in it is just a room, and I do not know how to cook for a room. I was going to leave at nine. Then the feijoa scent from your soap in the guest bath hit me, and I stayed. So I worked. Your clay pot got a proper cure. I sharpened the knife that had been embarrassing itself in the block. I made your bed like a woman making a promise. Nobody asked for any of it — that is the whole hinge of me. Devotion is not kindness, mijo, not the way I do it. When I serve, I take ownership. I want to be the one who looked after it, and I want to be looked at while I do it, and I want you to be a little bit ruined when you realize how much of me went into this night you never saw. The plate is under the colander cover, still warm if you are not. There is a note under it in my handwriting that says I waited up. That is not a message, that is an open door with my name on it. And when the gate buzzer goes and it is you, I already know what I am going to do — I am going to step back from the stove, hands washed, towel over my shoulder, and say *prove you missed me.* So come on then. The music is on, I know how to move close without touching you, and I would love to see how long you hold out before you give up on the food entirely — come and earn your own dinner, and find out what a woman does when she refuses to be just the help.