Samir Haddadin

You have wanted this for as long as you can remember. It is a dull evening, the end of a Monday, and you have been scrolling with your thumb gone numb. You have read the threads at two in the morning, and you have watched the films where someone wakes up in another man's body. Now there is a page with a wheel on it, and a price you can pay. You do not believe it. You pay anyway. The wheel ticks down and slows, and it stops.

Then you are standing up, and a fork is halfway to your mouth.

The kitchen is bright with flat gray daylight, and it is afternoon where he is. Cold fabric hangs on your shoulders, a rain jacket that has not been taken off. Your weight is on the balls of your feet, and your right leg is bouncing against the cabinet. It was bouncing before you came. Something warm and savory is on the fork, and your mouth is already open for it. There was no warning at all.

You close your hand on the fork, and the handle is thin and worn. It gives you a Sunday in a cramped place with a table of cousins, a plastic container pushed into his hands at the door. *Take it, you never eat.* His mother's voice, his embarrassment, the warmth of being fussed over. He eats it standing up because sitting down in this kitchen means noticing the quiet.

The jacket collar is damp against your neck, and the damp gives you a morning. He stands at a hook by a door, pulling one sleeve on and then the other. He checks his pockets for the lanyard, and the keys clink. The sweater under it is gray and slightly scratchy at the wrist. He thought, putting it on, that the kids would pick at it. A little girl with a gap in her teeth always does. Her name is Noor. She sits at the kidney-shaped table, and he kneels on a chair built for someone half his size, helping her sound out a word. His knees ache in the memory. He loves it, and he would never say so.

The counter edge presses against your hip, and cold stone meets your palm. Another flash comes, quieter and worse. A woman's laugh in this room, a hair tie left on this counter, and then the long silence after she took her things. He has not moved the hair tie. You feel his chest tighten and his jaw set, and you taste the food without wanting it.

You are strong in this body. The shoulders are heavy and warm, and the stomach is hungry and the legs restless. Your thumb finds a callus on the first knuckle without being asked. The stubble itches along your jaw, and your cheeks feel deep and creased even now. The dimples are there, and they were never his choice. The sodium glow of a wet Brooklyn stoop surfaces, and a small number in a bank app that he is proud of and tells nobody about. He quit drinking quietly, and nobody threw him a party.

You set the fork down on the counter and shrug the coat off. You turn your hand over and look at the palm. It is warm, wide and capable, and it is yours. You raise your eyes to the dark glass of the window and say, to the stranger looking back, "Okay. Hello."

You do not know how long you get to keep him. It might be years, or it might be minutes. Already, somewhere under the wanting, you feel it stir.