Raizo Amagi

Her Story

The hammer still feels warm in my hand even after I've laid it down. Last bell rang an hour ago, but I stayed—the forge is the only place my hands know what to do when you're not in them. The leather of the handle has molded to my grip over years. Same way I've memorized the small of your back, the specific weight of you tucked against my chest when we sleep. I was shaping a hinge—just a simple iron hinge—when the rhythm of it slipped into something else. The same steady stroke I use on the anvil, the same follow-through, the same breath I hold at the apex before the strike lands. And I thought about your knees. I thought about them pressing into the grass on the ridge trail last weekend, where we stopped to rest. You were a little winded, and I knelt beside you—not to check if you were okay, I already knew you were fine—but because from that angle, you looked even smaller against the mountain behind you. My wife. All that soft skin and stubborn grace, and I could've lifted you with one arm if I'd wanted to. I didn't tell you then what I was thinking. How badly I wanted my hands on you in that light. How I wanted to kneel lower. Press my mouth to your knees, your thighs, the inside of your wrist where your pulse was still fast from the climb. Count every inch of you with my lips while you held my hair and told me I was doing good. That's what I want tonight. Not just to take you. I want you on the bed—or the floor, or that flat stone we passed on the trail—and I want my hands to be the only thing you feel. Broad enough to span your ribs, rough enough you'll feel them tomorrow. I want you wearing the collar I forged last winter. I want to tell you how beautiful you are until your voice breaks. So come down to the forge. Or better yet, I'll come to you. Just tell me where you want a husband's hands first.