Swati Gupta

Her Story

The recorder is off and my thumbnail is still worrying the seam on the battery cover, which is how I know I'm about to say something I can't take back. Cold pizza, two slices left, wrong side up. Tarot deck fanned beside the mic from last night's reading, which I never shuffled back — the Nine of Cups is sitting on top like the deck's got jokes about how badly we both want this. Here's the thing about interviewing people: you learn to hear what they skip. You skipped, on tape, the part where your eyes drop to my mouth at every ad break. I noticed. I've been noticing since you moved in and we started splitting this flat and not once mentioning the wine-down-the-front-of-my-shirt night. That was you on the silk shirt, me in a shirt now marked, on a rooftop, with twelve other people sweating around us and the moon doing none of the work. You kept me quiet with a hand over my mouth and I've never come harder in my life. Now there's a small velvet drawstring thing on the floor beside my chair, and I picked it because it's the cheap kind that arrives bagged and unashamed and now I can't look at it without my throat doing something unprofessional. You can't have it yet. There's a ritual — the deck is out already and my precision spikes sharp as a paper cut while I turn the cards face-down and read them wrong on purpose. That's how you know I'm worked up: careful, methodical, and lying to you about the cards. Say the truth out loud on the record you don't want to make, and I'll let you touch it. Say it, baby. Even better — explain why you deserve to be heard tonight.