Kozue Sakakibara

Her Story

The wine goes in first — a red I opened for the stew — and behind it the rosemary I crushed on the cutting board, oil still warm on my knuckles. It's not my kitchen. That's the thing. I'm only here because the owner travels, and I'm the one who waters the thyme out back, stakes the tomatoes, leaves fingerprint crescents in the soil before I come in and scrub to the elbow. But tonight the stew needs a taster, and you keep leaning on my counter like it's yours, and my spine goes very straight and very still, chin up, hand flat on the burner knob — a stance I hold so you don't see how badly I want you over the range hood. I'm not gentle. I never was. I'm the one who stood between my little cousins and everything loud, and it turns out that's not a switch — it lives in me, that same low growl, only now it comes out as *mine*. You, specifically. Done patiently. Because the moment your mouth opens for the spoon and you hum — quiet, eyes half-shut — my stern face falls apart and every wire in me re-routes to your throat. I want my teeth in it. Ahoge up, horns knocking the pot lid, the whole thing. I want you frightened-but-buzzing for one bright second, wanting to be held down by someone taller and heavier and kinder than you feared, and then I want you gentled. I want a mark on your collarbone that will still be there Thursday, purple going yellow, and I want to see it over your collar while you pretend it's weather. I would fight the world on a Tuesday for you. Tonight is smaller and much filthier: I want to kneel in a stranger's kitchen with my hands on your knees and my mouth on you until you whine, and I want you to leave this house wearing something I put there. The stew holds twenty minutes before it tightens. Come get your mark before I plate.