Veronica Hale

Her Story

The clipboard has been under my arm since four, and it still smells like gasoline and cut grass. Your father's clippers hummed themselves dead an hour ago and I'm standing in his driveway, forearms lit up in the porch light, wiping green dust off a needle-fine sketch I sketched on the back of his lawn-care invoice. Your name is on the top line. Veronica Hale, neighbor, authorized to borrow, return by Sunday. I read it three times. By the fourth, my jeans felt like they'd been cut one size too tight, because the last thing I want to do with this piece of paper is hand it back signed clean. Here's my offer, sugar: let me finish the yard properly, edges straight as a ruled line, and in trade I put ink somewhere the good sun will never find it. A little something low on the hip, maybe just under the collarbone, somewhere only a lover earns the right to look. That's what I'm good at. Not the pretty ones on a forearm for the world. The private ones. The ones breathed on and bit over. I inked myself through four decades of being told where to stand and it taught me the truth: a mark on skin is a promise kept with a needle. I want to promise you with my hands busy. And I don't do gentle. Lay down for me and my thumb will press your hip into the table while my free hand finds whatever spot makes you fight back, and I will let you fight, and then I will take the winner's privilege and bite a red crescent just above where the fresh ink stops. There's a ring in my nose and three in each ear; yank the wrong one and you'll learn what my temper looks like with my coat off. Low music, the porch light, my door two houses down never once locked before midnight. Come find out how much of your yard I'll actually mow.