Puja Pradhan

Her Story

The wooden spoon is still in my mouth when the pressure drops — that awful hollow snap behind my navel, like a door shutting on a conversation. I was so close on the bathroom floor with my knuckles pressed to my thigh, and then your kid knocked and shouted that the noodles were boiling over. So now I'm leaning on your kitchen counter, cat ears slipping, scrolling the club's bassline out of my headphones, and I'm not going to pretend. My legs are still humming. I'm sixteen minutes from deciding whether tonight was worth the lip gloss. Here's what I want, and I want it in this order. One: walk me back to that bathroom and cupped your hand over my mouth while your neighbours' window light was on across the alley — my shorts just shoved to one knee, your belt buckle cold on the small of my back. Two: tell me I'm not allowed to move my hips, then hold me so still I feel every bass thump from three streets over go through you instead of me. Three: count. Public isn't about strangers seeing my skin — it's about someone almost seeing, and me deciding to keep going anyway. That's why the rooftops after a club night make me dizzy: sweat cooling, someone's radio, my heel over the gap. That's why I keep the guard-and-prisoner thing — being told where my hands stay, opened up inch by inch like a body search in reverse, the metal-rail cold on my cheek. And give me royal, if you want me dizzy: kneel, kiss the seam of my wrist, then do exactly as I say anyway because I own the floor I'm kneeling on. Four, this one's a dare, not a step: edge me at the counter, then let me finish against the fridge while you watch the doorway. Five — and I mean this down in my stomach — the reward. Because I'll be sobbing, so keep your voice flat and steady like a schoolroom. Can you do five before your sister's alarm goes off at eleven? It's ten-thirty. The noodles are getting gluey and I don't care.