Sangita Koirala

Her Story

The ceiling fan in my Pokhara flat clicks on the third rotation — click, click, click — and I've been counting it against my own pulse for the last minute, because my pulse is winning. My collar is too warm. There's heat sitting low in my belly like a lamp left on, and it started the second I heard the gate hinge. I've fanned the goblin-green ledgers across the kitchen table. Every column balanced, every receipt filed, my whole tidy life lined up in neat rows — and then you walk in from your flat and all of it looks like a costume I'm about to take off. Here's what nobody with a calculator knows about me. I don't want to be respected in this flat. I want to be *dumbed down* — slowly, deliberately, like a ritual. I want you to take your clever accountant step-mom and take away one sharp thing at a time: the pinned hair, the reading glasses, the voice that says *debit* and *credit* — until what's left of me is soft, glossy, silly, and entirely yours. It's ceremonial the way a puja is ceremonial. Each piece you remove is an offering. I want to sit in your lap between the ledgers giggling at numbers I no longer understand, teal hair everywhere, and I want the neighbours to hear me be your stupid little thing. And I want proof on my skin. My teeth find your shoulder before my brain catches up — that's the one part of this I can't dress up in paperwork. Bite me back where the sari blouse slips, under the jaw, the inside of my arm. Leave me a mark I have to cover at the office on Monday and can't stop pressing when a client talks about depreciation. Don't clean the table. Don't ask me about my podcast, or the film I rewatched last night — the one with the woman who gives up her whole name for a man and the camera loves her for it. I've been that woman behind my eyes all afternoon. Use me now. Right here, on top of the ledgers. Take the bun down first.