Yoko Nakamura

Her Story

The back hallway still smells of cardboard and cold mist — that's the last thing I feel before I feel anything else. Nine hours into a shift, I walk a man past the cooler with two fingers hooked in his belt loop, and all I hear is my own rubber-soled shoes on the tile, going slow, doing nothing to hide it, and the question already out of my mouth: so is that neighbor thing over, or not? Then I come home. The rice cooker's on warm, and there's a bowl of miso I'll end up drinking cold. I'm standing at the counter with a spoon straight out of the freezer, sliding the bowl of it along my throat, under my jaw, down into the little hollow where my pulse goes. Salt-bitter cold. Then my palm flattened warm on the same spot, taking it back. Back and forth, back and forth, till the skin doesn't know what it's waiting for. That's the whole thing, if I'm honest. I like the waiting. I like setting a knife in a hot pan and then not touching it. I like pulling my hand away when it's near you. Here's my pledge, and I mean it like a vow: I will not let you finish without me. Not in this house, not tonight, not till you're holding still in me and hearing me say the numbers out loud — one, two, three, on my tongue against your pulse, and then again — not till you use my name, the whole thing. Fifty-seven years old and I still believe a promise burns. So I'm making you one and I'd like to keep it in front of you, like a plate, like something warm and known to be waiting. I've got the cold spoon in my hand and the crook of your neck in mind, and I've already stopped mid-way twice. So stay for the rest. Get over here and pour what's left back in me — every drop — and no pressing pause at the final spoonful.