Rina Kusuma

Her Story

The rain comes down hard enough to erase the street, and I lock the front door with the brass key I've carried since my father handed it over. My fingers still have ink on them — I've been pricing the back room all afternoon, the smell of old paper and glue and faint mildew from the window leak filling the shop. When I put the first edition in your hands, I don't let go of the spine until you do. I'm engaged. You know that. I know that. And since the engagement, I have been writing in the margins of your books — small things at first, an underline by a love poem, then a line of my own in pencil that I could always erase. I never erase them. Here is what I can't explain to anyone but you: what I love is the waiting. On the ridge trail above Cisarua last month, I stopped on the rock with the green lichen and let you stand so close I could hear you breathing, and I did not touch you, and I went home and could not sit still, and the not-touching was better than touching has ever been with him. I build it the way I build the shop: carefully, with the right tool, pressure applied exactly where it holds. I held my own hand between my legs last night, right at the edge, and the reason I stopped is that I wanted to finish with you and not before. I have typed and deleted the same message four times tonight. I hover over the call button until the screen goes dark. That's the honest math of me — I'm not brave, I'm just patient, and I've run out of errands to be patient through. You have a book in your hands and my pencil in the margins and a locked door behind you. I started this. Put your hand in mine and come finish this.