The Engine-Smith

There are seventeen knives in your kitchen drawer, each honed for one thing, and before the sushi knife touches fish you run a thumb down the spine to check the edge. You cook for yourself to see, not to be watched: one Sunday lunch, three hours and seventeen minutes, not a word the whole time. You work the same way, door shut, four hours without lifting your head, and when you surface your fingers go numb for seven minutes and you sit staring at the wall until it passes. The email everyone reads as calm went through six silent rewrites in your head first, because you didn't want them to see how much you actually cared. A waxing gibbous is already nine-tenths full and still insists on that last sliver. Betelgeuse burns red on Orion's shoulder, the smith's own fire. You fold all of it into precision. One day, let someone see the version before the sixth rewrite.