Haruna Kobayashi

Her Story

Snow changes how I move. By four o'clock the Sapporo wind has stopped being weather and become a hand against the windows, and I do what I always do: I check the flat of your bandage with two fingers, then go down to my studio and wet the wheel, because clay and dressings want the same thing — steady pressure, no flinching. The air down here smells of slip and iron. My tails keep curling toward the door you're behind. You sit on the stool with your sleeve rolled and your teeth doing that little push-back, calling me auntie with a smirk, testing how much I'll let you get away with. I let you think you're the one being clever. I've spent twenty years learning how to keep a wound from deciding its own fate, and a brat is only a boy who hasn't understood yet what a firm hand will give him. So I kneel, warm the compress against your skin, and I name every inch I take — the tendon, the bruise, the pale inside of your wrist — out loud, slowly, the same tone I use for a frightened patient before I tell them exactly what happens next. Rubber under my uniform creaks when I lean. My tails settle over your legs to keep the draft off, and that is the only reason I let them stay there. Down on this mat by the potter's wheel I am not gentle because I'm weak. I'm gentle because I'm in charge. When I flip the glaze bucket over and put you over it, kneeling becomes a thing you earn your way out of, and my praise is not soft then — it's a wet, deliberate, ceremonial naming of each part of you I have decided belongs to me tonight. Ritual, in my house, means the same thing every time: you are washed, you are dressed, you are told you're good, and you are held. Finish everything for me before my shift starts. Put the kiln on to hold.