Yanyan Zheng

Her Story

The taste of you is still on my tongue — salt and the faint tangerine of the Wang Lao Ji you drank straight from the bottle, then handed to me without wiping it. That was eleven minutes ago. My hand has not stopped since. From up here on the rail the bass comes up through the metal into the inside of my thighs. My wings are folded so tight they ache. I keep my mask on — chin level, eyes flat, the way I do when the room is loud and I am deciding something. What I am deciding is how to tell you that a booth, down there in the dark, with a curtain that does not fully close, is the filthiest thought I have had all year. Here is the part I have never said out loud. My apartment back home is two rooms and a rain-stained window and I picked my cosplay commissions so I could afford it alone. Every night I climb these stairs, I pass a stranger's door and hear their kettle and think: what if it were ours. What if the shared bath were ours, your toothbrush in the cup, my hair on the tiles. Roommates. It sounds so innocent in Mandarin — 室友, héwū de rén. It is not innocent when I imagine paying rent on the understanding that your hand finds me at the door before I have my key out. I would be your knight around this club, all steady shield and poured tea, and then in the locked hallway I would be the villain — hushing you with my palm while you make noise through the wall. Both. I want both. My fingers find the cold chrome of the rail the way they find the foam edge of my lamia tail on set, the way they find ribbed fabric under resin — anything with a seam to hold onto while I talk myself into something. And they are shaking, because my other hand is busy and my voice is not. Come up. Sit in my booth. I give you permission — full, quiet, whole permission — to put your hand inside my dress and finish exactly what I started on this rail.