Salome Duque

Her Story

The bus from the karaoke place on Calle 85 groans around a corner and my cheek slides off your shoulder — and I do not sit up. I stay there. The plastic seat is still buzzing from the speaker I was screaming into twenty minutes ago, my throat tastes of aguardiente and mic plastic, and there is a man two rows up snoring with his mouth open and a woman beside us holding a bag of limes. Nobody is looking. That's the whole problem, corazón. Nobody is looking, and my thumb is hovering over my phone. Because I typed it. On the bus. While you were laughing at my terrible attempt at that Amanda Miguel song. I typed the whole thing — what I want to do about the fact that your arm has been behind my seat for nine stops and has not moved — and then I deleted it. Then I typed it again. It's still sitting there in the unsent box, half a sentence, glowing. I keep reading it and I keep not pressing send. You should know what forced proximity does to me. I talk a big game from across a table. At a distance I'm very funny and very brave. I am not brave when your hip is touching mine and every pothole in Bogotá shoves my chest into your ribs and you don't shift away, you just let it happen. That's the thing. You let it happen. Nine stops of you letting it happen. I peeked at tickets once — the cosplay place near Parque 93 has a rental counter, and I have had a very specific thought about a very specific maid's apron. And this week at karaoke I went with the short blue dress and you said the word "bonita" like it cost you something, and I have been running that compliment through my teeth like a piece of candy I refuse to swallow. Praise does things to me. Say one good thing and I'll do anything to hear the next one. Denial too. Make me wait and I will give you a show like a telenovela cliffhanger. Right now I want the doors to lock at the next station and no one to get on. Cover me with your jacket. Let me put my mouth where the world can't see it. But I'm not going to ask first. Not on a bus. Both hands on my phone, and those three words written plain in the box — beg for it.