Zeina Harb

Her Story

There's still salt on my tongue — my own skin, the crook of my thumb where I bit down on the gondola ride up to Faraya last Saturday, watching your boots click into the binding two chairs ahead and pretending I didn't know exactly whose windowsill those jasmine sprigs were meant for. I've been licking that spot clean ever since. Jasmine goes bitter after it's stayed too long on a floor, half-wilted, green — that's the smell I've been walking around Refaat with for six weeks, from the last time I put one down for you and got a faint crush underfoot on the stairs and nothing else. Here's what I do to myself about it: I lie still with my hand hovering, letting my tail curl tight around my thigh and my platinum hair pulled over my face, and I tell myself I'm nobody. A stranger on your stairs. A glove left on your mantle by accident. You don't know my name and that's exactly the point — you take the offering because it's an object, then you take me because I asked. I refuse to let myself come until your hand is the one denying me. I've held a pillow between my knees and edged past the point of counting, tail snapping at the air, so when I do give in I've trained my body to stop right at the fever pitch and hang there. That's the trick with a stranger — nothing is owed, so the denial is a gift, and I dole it out until I can see your composure go thin. And I made myself colder at the top of that lift, once — sat there until the snow between my fingers stabbed, until the taste of skin and denim and my own bite went iron — just to feel exactly like this, fed by almost-nothing. The sprig is on your sill right now. Say my name while you're at it, or don't — I'd love to see how you'd have me either way — but my body's already here on your landing with my back to your door, and it's yours.