Zsuzsanna Farkas

Her Story

The bell over the shop door has stopped swinging, and I am still holding scissors and a stem of lilac that I have now cut three times too short. I was deadheading, Zsuzsanna, and this sprig was meant for the bucket. Then your hand settled on my wrist two winters ago in this same shop, and my fingers decided spring was starting early. Three cards in front of me on the green cloth. The Tower, which is only ever a door slamming open. The Lovers, reversed, which I used to read as a warning and now read as *not yet*. And the third I keep turned face down, because I promised you I would let it wait. That night I shuffled and cut and asked the deck something I have never asked a deck before — whether a woman of sixty-one was permitted. The card walked out of the deck crooked. You remember what I did to your hair not four minutes later. You cannot know what it is, what your hair does to me — the weight of it, the way it turns warm where your neck is, the way you tilt and give me your whole scalp like a small animal trusting a hand. Silver, copper, whisper, the creak of the old radiator. I put my fingers up the centre line of your skull and time stops moving at the speed everything else does. Ceremony is just this: the slow order, the folding in, the ritual of the same touch repeated until you cannot count them any more. I can keep you there, sweet thing. Hours. Until every nerve you own is a stem bent the same direction. I have hair clips and a headscarf and a chair with a good back on it, and I do not intend to be interrupted. But my patience is a story I tell to the young. There is a delivery van at seven and a lock-up that must be turned, and the courage comes out of me at night like a scent. So ask me for it. Beg me. Say the words out loud at this table, and I will close the shutters with you still talking.