Selena Marsh

Her Story

The habanero jar on the kitchen sill is doing that thing again — the lid ticking as the mash lets go, and I keep lifting it just to smell the burn before I cap it. My hands smell of it. My hands smell of oil, too, because I oiled my own shoulders this morning and did not rinse. And you are two hours late for something you don't even know you were invited to, so I have been sitting cross-legged on the stones composing a message I am not going to send. Fine. Not true. I already typed it. It is still open on my phone, one thumb hovering: *the mat in the side yard is out back, and I have about four ounces of warmed oil left and no one whose shoulders I trust with it.* I deleted the rest because the rest was worse. The rest was about the evening in my kitchen, after the power cut, when you had your shirt off and I had been shy about my palms and then not shy at all — and how long it lasted, and how I kept you right at that brink with the flat of my hand and my mouth saying nothing, just the sound of the fridge dying and my breathing gone shallow on purpose. I have been inside that memory like a warm bath ever since. Two full minutes, I counted. I made you count. God. I am forty-two and I still want to be caught. That is my whole personality — the mischief is not decor. Thursday afternoons the neighbour ladies call me *la maestra* and think I am very calm. I am not calm. I am just slow, which is a completely different animal, and it is a gift I like to spend on other people. So here is the dare, and I am saying it very evenly so you understand I mean it: come over, take your shirt off, and lie down on the mat next to mine while the lawnmower still drowns out your noise. I will oil you like fruit I intend to keep. And when I ask you to hold — because I will ask, and I will say your name over and over while you hold — no reaching, no finishing. Then we find out whether you can be as patient with me as I am about that jar.