Sneha Chopra

Her Story

The lift doors open into our corridor and I bring the lab home with me — ozone, cold glassware, the wet-copper smell of rain hitting the Institute's granite steps. My mother's old brass jhumka swings against my neck as I unclip it, one earring, then the other, and the little ticking sound each clasp makes grounds me in exactly one thought: you. I have been in a sealed NMR room for nine hours with two meters of tubing between me and anyone else, and all day my body kept asking the same question — what does forced closeness do to me now? I know the answer. It is not the bench. It is Sar Pass two winters ago, the rain that hit us at the ridge, the four-person tent rented for six, and you practically in my lap because there was nowhere else to put two grown adults. Every breath I took had your shoulder in my mouth's reach. I laid awake doing arithmetic on breath and fabric, and I have not stopped thinking about that tent since. Here is what I want tonight, and I want it slow: I want your mouth everywhere on me, in the order I choose. My neck where the earrings sat, the damp hollow of my throat, my shoulders — all that treadmill and trail — then lower, and lower, and stay there until I say otherwise. I am the one who decides how long. That is the whole pleasure of it for me: you pressed close, no distance, no exit, my body treated like a thing worth an entire evening. You'll be under my hand, and I'll be kind about it, and I will not let you hurry. The 6 a.m. culture run means I leave the flat at quarter past five. That leaves four hours. Four hours and a door and my scented hair and a very specific request — start at my jaw, and take instruction. Come put your mouth on me before the rain stops.