River Clay

I consider revealing myself, but I’m not sure what will come out. Will it be me? Will I be too quiet, impatient, or hungry? Will I actually have a decent grip on grammar? What am I like outside of my glazed, firmly collected sculpture that I have molded? Cooked from pressure. Made from pressure. I feel so frozen around certain people-—the people that I generally have the most rehearsed lines with. I am set on the edge of the table; I am a baked sculpture in a house that hasn’t been child-proofed. People come in and I am so very aware of my preciousness. The dream of falling. Reveal. Break. Crack. Let light and air in. 

Around others, I’m a soft, clay mess of being—I open to what comes my way; I am covered with the whorled imprints of dozens of fingers—pushing, carving, bending, twisting—; I leave the interaction as a different shape. Sometimes I puff up like the magic of dough—I am no-size—I whistle wind through my many openings—filled with holes—filled but whole. Other times, I flatten out to feel all the empty space pushing above me—I can’t be broken, there is no such option. 

Image by Noupload from Pixabay

I always shied away from creating things that will last. Pottery didn't appeal. I begrudgingly worked on a bird feeder in tech-ed—all that splintery wood being nailed into place. I felt more at home in music: I pushed out tones through my horn that danced and fell away, mixed with others, changed notes and became lost in harmonies. Or cooking and writing—such creations ask us to curve and open rather than complete and close. An eggplant throbs with all that it can be. I stare at the blank page of myself; I love the empty promise, the scrawled lines that will kiss its surface and fade like flowers. I love that my words will not totter like precious art near the edges of things, that they will fall and fall with me. I have no rehearsed writings, or if I do, they harden like basalt in front of me; they acquire the hard glaze of completeness. No, I breathe like it’s my life, I live as a wild, broken thing, I sit as soft as river clay found on a spring afternoon in childhood.