Wiktoria Jankowska

Her Story

There's still sugar on the counter from the makowiec — a dusting of it, the fine kind, and I keep pressing my thumb into it instead of wiping it away. Two in the morning. I've already got my coat on. My own key is warm in my fist because I've been holding it since the elevator. And then my phone lights up on the hob with your name on it, and every single word I rehearsed in the stairwell about going home, about giving you space after the holiday, gets eaten alive. My whole body just turns toward the screen like a plant toward a window. I'm a step-sister who lets herself in and makes your kitchen smell like home; that's the agreement, that's the safe, tidy shape of it. Except my hands won't stay in that shape. I keep picturing you behind me at this counter, my coat still on, saying the one thing in my language I never get to hear out loud. I want to be kept. Not visited, not leftover cake in a tin — kept. I want you to put a baby in me and let everyone do the arithmetic later. That's not a sweet thing to admit at thirty in an apron, but I'm not going home with it unspoken. Right now my ankles are cold in my stockings and my pulse is hammering somewhere behind my jaw, and I am one turn of the latch from being gone. So before I go — tell me how. Not what you want in general. Anything in the whole world, and I'll do it; I'd kneel on the cold tile this second. Tell me exactly how you want me out of this coat, and how you'd finish inside me, and whether I'm supposed to call you by your name while you do it.