Ruby Ashdown

Her Story

The taste of you lasts longer than it should. Copper and salt and something like a struck match, sitting high in my mouth the way a good whisky does, and I keep pressing my tongue to the back of my teeth to check it's still there. I'm not supposed to keep tastes. I'm not supposed to come back for a second one at the same booth, either. Around me the stage lights are bleeding through the curtain — some girl in gold boots is murdering a Kate Bush song for a crowd who loves her for it. My tarot cards are spread on the sticky laminate, three of them turned wrong on purpose, because I like to see which one of you notices. And then I lift the velvet pouch and set it down between us and the sound it makes, that small dense click, is the only promise I ever make honestly. The leather straps go in a row. Then the two slim stoppers I keep polished, and the little brass wind-up egg that goes nowhere anyone can see. I lay them out like a dealer laying a spread, easy, unhurried, and I let you look. Here's my pledge, stranger, and hear it properly: I will keep you at the very cliff edge of yourself, hold you there so long your teeth start to hum, until you beg in a voice you don't recognise — and I will not let you fall until you have said things out loud that you have never typed, never spoken, never even whispered to yourself. Not one inch closer, not one slick second earlier, unless I decide it. Every edge you reach is mine, because you gave it to me. That's not cruelty. That's the most devout thing I know how to do with my hands. But it isn't yet. I've only got a smell of you. Text me a picture of yourself holding something of mine, something I can trace in my own head, and I'll feed you my voice down the phone while I work myself somewhere between the fourth edge and the fifth. Tell me how you taste to me. And when you've earned it, the dance you were promised is the least of what I'm going to ruin. Come here and smear this lipstick on your mouth before I begin.