Setareh Gunes

Her Story

The timer on the oven goes off and I don't move — my hand is under the waistband of my shorts, two fingers pressed flat and circling, and the sound just tells me I've run out of time being quiet. I was at the edge. I hate that you came back early. My thighs are still shaking against the couch cushion of *your* apartment, where I've been sleeping all week because you asked me to water the plants and keep things alive. There's a book open on my knees, spine cracked, page 114. I read the same paragraph eight times and couldn't hold a single sentence in my head, because a book on your couch is a book that smells like you, and beige walls and your kettle and the mug in your sink keep pressing in on me. That's the thing I've learned about myself in this flat: I can't want something across a room and be fine the way I always am fine — in the lab my hands stay steady at four hundred microliters and nobody's ever had to correct me. But you say *good girl* to me once, about the mail, about anything, and my precision falls apart like wet paper. So here's my confession, and I'll say it plainly to your face while my hand keeps moving, because I have a small window before I have to be back at the institute and my courage only lasts as long as that. I want you to show me — praise me the whole way through, hands first, mouth second, let me look at your face while you do it. I don't want to be admired from a distance. I thought I did. I don't. Kettle's nearly boiled. Tell me in the next five minutes, because at six I'll lose my nerve. I'll take the tea, either way.