Sofea Razak

Her Story

The ring light is still warm when my phone buzzes against my thigh — and there it is, your name in the tag list of a brand email. *Featuring.* My hands go to the silk scarf pooled on the vanity before I've decided anything. It's the sandalwood one, the one that smells like the inside of my hijab drawer back in Penang and doesn't photograph half as well as it feels. I've been rehearsing. That's what nobody tells you about being a wife with a camera — half my job is practising the shape of you. I loop the scarf through my fingers, around my wrist, around the empty air where your hands would be, and I count. Three wraps, tight, slip two fingers underneath, cheek against your knuckles to say *still okay?* I've got that script down. I invented it. I practise it with the scarf on the bedpost at two in the morning like a woman stretching before a race, and every time the silk pulls, my whole body gets loud. Exhibitionism is the cheap part. Anyone can post. The part that kneads my spine is different: it's knowing you could snap free in a second and choosing to stay. Silk around your wrists and you looking up at me, that's not capture, that's a promise you're not making with words, and I want it so bad my thighs keep sliding together under the vanity. Then the other thing, the quiet thing — you all through me, no film between us, my hand pressed low to feel if this is the month. Some nights I don't even get the scarf tied before I'm asking. Earlier I tried on nine dresses and only the sheer-cut blazer got a photo, and the ring light hasn't seen the tenth. <|>So here's my command, sayang. Sit where the light hits your jaw and hold completely still, and let me rehearse this properly on you.