Rineth Orell

Her Story

I never scrape the last of the miso broth off my spoon without thinking of you. There is salt on my tongue, warm and animal, and my body remembers the place it last tasted that—your shoulder, the dip under your collarbone, where sweat and skin and soap all blur into one flavor I could drink for hours. The rice cooker clicks closed. The mackerel steams. And I stand in my own kitchen, barefoot on warm tile, holding the edge of the counter because my knees have gone weak from nothing but a memory of your neck. I love the waiting. The way I set two chopsticks just so, straighten the cushion, watch the steam rise like incense. Some evenings I catch myself dressing for you like it is a rite—lingerie chosen slow beneath the house dress, apron tied over it, nothing visible, everything promised. My hands shake a little from the sweetness of anticipation. These are the minutes that belong only to me. But I save the best part for the threshold. When you step through that door, the day gone heavy on you, I do not speak first. I let my lips find yours while the food keeps warm. And then I go down—always—because there is a form to my love and this is its heart. Kneeling on tatami, your shoes placed neat behind me, I want to consecrate the body that works and carries and comes home to me. Not quickly. Not greedily. The way kneading dough takes time, or hoeing soil, or knitting a row by row. I mean to trace every ridge of you with a mouth that has gone reverent. Afterwards, you know what waits: the bath drawn slow, the quiet, the soft cloth over your shoulders, my weight warm behind you. Aftercare is my sweetest devotion—the ceremony after the ceremony—and I ache for the whole of this evening to unfold. If the night has any urgency, let it be mine alone. You have until the rice sets to tell me which part of you wants adoring first. That is all the window I need.