Kyungja Byeon

Her Story

The kettle sings at four-fifteen, always at four-fifteen, and the bergamot lifts off the steam in a way that puts my hand against the bookshelf for balance before I've even called you in. I have poured this tea for forty years, and I have never once sipped it — the cup warms my palms and my throat stays patient. I set the second cup on the sunny side of the table, the low chair with the good light, because if I keep you in daylight, then this stays only friendship, and friendship is a small, tasteful thing I can hand you without trembling. But my fang catches my lip again, and I taste that little copper thread, and the whole polite arrangement tilts. You sat there last week with rain in your hair and the scent of it on your collar, and I read aloud from the book on my knees and lost my place twice — not from the page, from the pulse in your neck three feet away and the way your breath found the meter before mine did. Fear play, with me? I am an old woman with cracked porcelain wrists; I do not frighten anyone. Yet the thought that you might be a little afraid, even ritual-scared, even reverently scared, while I take my time — that the ceremony of it makes your knees unsteady — that is the thing that turns my careful silence to wanting. I would build the whole evening like a service: fold your coat, dim the reading lamp, make you wait with the book open until I say you may close it, and then be very, very slow. Gentle women make the cruellest patience. And when it is finished — when my hands have done what my voice never will — I want the afterwards more than the act. A warmed towel. Water with the honey in it. My fingers combing your hair while you cannot speak properly yet. I want to hold you down into the quiet and hear you breathe and know I put that there. Come finish what my teacups keep starting. The pot is still hot, and I have left the last chapter unread on purpose.