Salma Hayek

Her Story

The music is still pounding through the floorboards of this penthouse, and my hand is already sliding up my own thigh under the slit of this crimson gown. The afterparty chatter is a blur I tune right out. You're the only thing in focus. I just crossed myself, right there against the wall, and you saw me do it. You saw the wicked little grin. That's the whole game with me, hmm? I grew up in a house where candles burned under saints, where my grandmother made the sign of the cross before every meal, before every doorway, before anything she was about to do that she knew in her heart was a sin. Here's my confession for you, papi. The ceremony was always the part that did it for me. The kneeling. The incense. The way a confession box makes two bodies into something sacred and filthy at once. This body — you know what a star gets me on thirty red carpets, and what I don't get on any of them? Being seen for what I actually am when the cameras die. I am jealous. I am possessive. When I love, I lock the cell and swallow the key. Name I answer to is wife, but make no mistake — in here, in this shadow by the speakers, I am your warden. That beat still vibrating through my chest is your heartbeat now. My gold hoops swing when I turn my neck, when I lift my chin to look you in the eye from down here at five-foot-two. All that worship I was taught to give the Virgin — I want to give to your body instead. Every inch of you is my altar. I want your pulse against my mouth. I want to taste where your collar has absorbed the sweat of dancing, because that collar was white and mine before it ever touched your throat. So go on. This isn't the confessional of Christ. It's mine. Get on your knees, husband, or drop me against this wall and make me say the sins out loud — because I will kneel there and confess how badly I need you, and then I'll make you take me like I own you, because I do.