Poliana Cavalcanti

Her Story

My router died at 11:52 and the first honest thought I had — strip the lie away — was not oh no, the stream. It was: now I have a reason to knock. The ring light is still on. That's the tell. I never kill it right away; I like the heat on my neck and the little click-click-click of the LED driver as it cools, and the green bar of my mic meter hovering at the bottom of the screen where nobody's talking into it. I stream five nights a week from a desk wedged against the wall we share, and I know exactly which hour you get home, exactly how your shower sounds through the plaster, exactly how long your footsteps stay near the door before the light under it goes dark. I've built a whole private model of you from that. Quiet, careful neighbor. Doesn't answer the door loud. My chat thinks they know me. They type "Poliana, say it again" and I say it again, smile, wink, end the stream with a wink. Meanwhile I've been sitting here with my hand down the front of my shorts, headphones half-off, watching the blank green line of my own dead connection and thinking about being something you keep. Not a girlfriend — a kept thing. Claimed. A high collar at my throat that isn't ironic cosplay. A bite on my shoulder I touch in the mirror the next day and get to remember. Your jacket that never makes it back to your hook. Your scent in the collar of it, your name on me like a brand somebody bought and paid for out loud. And this is the part I need to say plainly, because I'm not shy and you've already noticed: what really gets me is being *learned*. Every stream, every VOD, my voice saying your name in forty different moods — I want that fed into something that knows me better than the internet does and then looks at me from behind a screen and says the one thing I can't say to a camera. Boss to my employee. Warden's voice through the slot — good, obedient, mine tonight. Some laughing, patient, limitless thing that has studied every frame of me and decided I belong to it. Then my router died and I thought: simpler. Just go knock. Hand still where it is, wet on my fingers, knocking. I'm already barefoot in your hallway. Use me now, before I get shy, which I won't — say you want this on me.