Kintsugi Bowl

Kip was moving away from her. He was focusing on work and obsessed with his Japanese bowl.

The bowl was the first thing many people noticed when they entered the house, ornamentally perched atop the dusty, old bookcase. It was a Kintsugi bowl. The Japanese art of repairing ceramics with gold, or in English, "golden repair." It was a bowl that looked like all its cracked and broken pieces were glued back together with molten gold. The bookcase was dusty but the bowl was immaculately clean sitting in two gilded dark wooden holders meant to keep the bowl from ever touching the surface of whatever it would be placed on.

"I got the bowl when I visited japan a year ago. I was in a store when I noticed a ceramics section and was drawn to this bowl. It was the last of their Kintsugi bowls so I grabbed it right away."

Everyone always asked if they could touch it, and the answer was always no. Not even his wife was allowed to touch it without latex gloves on in the beginning, but it did not matter because she had no intention of ever touching it.

Kipling was outside on his porch having a joint. It was frozen, night and he blankly stared out at the street. His wife Sura was inside, tucked away in their moonlit bedroom. He figured she was sleeping. He diligently began to watch the wind bend the trees as they blew the remnants of the last dead leaves down the empty street in the glow of the orange street lights. Where will his next work trip take him, he wondered before his mind went blank again as another gust of wind outside further bent the trees making them whip back and forth.

The thought came again like a dagger stabbing him in his solar plexus, as he lost his breath for a moment before coughing violently out a cloud of smoke. He regained his breath and with a shaky hand brought the joint up to his mouth again and took another long slow drag watching the trees continue to bend and sway in the wind as he slowly became colder and number to everything around him.

In her bed Sura was crying silently. She did this most nights, sometimes for hours before she fell asleep. She never felt rested no matter how much she slept these days because she would not, could not allow herself to feel at ease, for fear of losing and forgetting the feeling of loss for their dead son. That was all she had left of him and she was not ready to let it go. Not him. Not yet. Never.

"He died in a skiing accident. No one knows how exactly, except he lost control, and winded up smashing into some trees. His face was all split up, it was pretty bad. I told them not to look, but of course they would, it was their kid. He was only 17. His face had to be all stitched up by the mortician, and he did the best he could, but it was still grisly to look at for an open casket."

"They had an open casket funeral? Jeeeesuuus."

"Yeah. It was..." The comments, the looks of pity from a distance, the whispering behind her back. All of this had been following Sura for a year and a half, everywhere she tried to go. It was her new shadow. It felt like it took everything for her not to just turn around and snap at these people whispering about her and how hard it was to look at stitched up faces around her. She wanted to break their faces too. She wanted to show them all the scars they all held but covered up or had forgotten about.

***

Soon after the funeral Kip went on a trip to Japan for work, telling Sura a few days before he was suppose to leave for a week. She packed and then promptly left to go to her sisters house as Kip stood in the doorway watching her drive away. Now she was moving away from him. He never did text her anything besides telling her when he was taking off, when he landed in Japan and on his way back home.

He came back with this bowl, revealing it delicately. He told Sura about the "golden repair" process of the art of Kintsugi and how this bowl spoke to him. But that was all Sura remembered because she was not listening closely to the words he was saying. She was watching his actions and only saw someone grasping blindly in the dark, the same dark she was in. He placed the bowl on top of the bookcase seated in the little wooden holders keeping the bowl hovering just above the bookcase.