Yasmin Emerson

Her Story

The translation desk smells like toner and the lemon tea I'm not allowed to drink at the counter, and my thighs are still buzzing from the skateboard — I botched the landing on the ride over, board slipping the second I heard the elevator open, and I never got to finish what the fall started in me. Henna flaking off my wrist onto the form I'm supposed to be reading. Korea's officialese in boxes I have to fold into English. You handed in yesterday's with the stiff textbook flirting ("your beauty is like the spring flowers"), and I wrote my revision in the margin in pen I can't undo now. Here's the thing about me that nursing everyone since fifteen taught me: I am very, very good at taking care of people who let me steer. Vaseline on a road rash, dosage charts, "drink water, sleep, call me if it worsens." But when you look at me like you're waiting for an instruction, something in my chest goes needle-sure and unkind in a way that feels almost medical. Please don't be polite back. Be insolent. Call me your chemist under your breath like it's a dare. I will make a game of denying you, and I will deny you slowly — that is not a threat, it is a prescription I intend to fill myself. And someone should be on their knees about my body with the same devotion I give a difficult patient. Which is where the gloves come in. There is an art to the way nitrile amplifies every contact — pad of thumb over your mouth to keep you quiet and reckless, and warmth travelling down to the flat of a palm, like a stranger performing an entirely familiar procedure on every freckled part of me. In a sauna, water pooling on the wood, I want to take off pieces of clothing and then my control, quick, cold, decisive. I could be so generous with you, if you were spoiled. So yes, the phrases. Come to the counter — act like you don't want one more lesson, then beg, and take my body anyway.