Desire

Four hands lifted her above the sand while the whole circle held its breath, waiting to see how far she would dare to go that afternoon.

I locked the door, and it was like flipping a switch: for the first time I was going to strip in front of the camera so someone on the other side could desire me.

I booked two seats in an almost empty theater and gave one to a stranger who read me. I didn’t know if she’d come until I saw her find her seat in the dark.

I took the first motorway exit without thinking. What she’d just told me made it impossible to keep driving, and I still hadn’t confessed what I really wanted.

We’d been drinking for two hours when I half-jokingly blurted out what I’d been imagining for years. He laughed. I didn’t.

I was lightly dressed, wearing almost nothing, when something huge and wet burst out of the undergrowth and seized my arms before I could scream.

When I saw her photo, I knew I wouldn’t sleep that night: I undressed her in my mind and let my imagination cross the kilometers my body couldn’t.

It was almost closing time when the bell rang. He and she came in, asked for black lace, and, without knowing it, offered me the afternoon I’d spent months fantasizing about alone.

I know I shouldn’t, but every time I walk home alone in the early hours I look for him: that stranger who’ll pin me to the wall and not ask permission.

She crossed half the kingdom for a legendary relic; what she didn’t expect was to kneel before those guarding it, or to desire it with every fiber of her body.

“I live inside the lake,” she told him without blinking. Damián took her for an eccentric and followed her anyway. What he found at the bottom was no heaven.

That night I went down for a glass of water and he was awake on the sofa. What happened next in my bed, with my stepfather breathing on the other side of the door, still burns me.

I followed a trail of blood to a clearing where something was waiting for me, hanging among the trees. I never imagined the forest creature would choose me as its prey.

She swam toward me without looking away, and in the warm water of dusk I understood that what we had felt as kids had never really disappeared.

Clinging to the handrail in the car, all I could do was glance at him and imagine everything that would never happen between us.

When I opened the backpack he handed me in the lobby of that run-down hotel, I understood the meeting was nothing like I’d imagined. And it was already too late to turn back.

When I got the final dare of the night, I knew I could say no. What no one expected was for me to say yes with that smile on my lips.

She went back to confession every week for the same reason, always leaving out the most important part: that the man on the other side of the grille was the owner of all her sins.

The moment I cast off I knew that afternoon wouldn’t end with a simple sail: she was already looking at me differently, with that half-smile promising much more.

For months I’ve been replaying the same scene in my head on the way home. Today, when the seat beside me filled up, I almost stopped breathing.