The Vise Remembers Every Grip

The vise closes on the workbench, jaws parallel, patient as stone. It does not care what it holds: copper pipe, splintered oak, a stranger's ring meant for resizing. Each object leaves something behind in the metal, a faint memory of resistance, of shape yielding to pressure. The vise has never made anything. It has only ever held things still long enough for other tools to work their violence. Perhaps that is its own kind of authorship, the stillness before the cut, the grip that makes the saw's path possible. Loosen the handle and the jaws fall open, indifferent, waiting for the next thing to surrender its shape.