Clay Where I Keep You

I keep you in a bowl I made one late November night.

With thumbs that didn’t trust themselves and wrists that held on tight.

The wheel was just a spinning heart, the slip a quiet plea—

The clay bowed in to meet my hands the way you once met me.

~~

The rim is not symmetrical; it wobbles where I cried.

A little higher on the left, the side you used to ride.

I didn’t smooth the fingerprints that ring its gentle seam;

I wanted proof that something stayed when you walked off the dream.

~~

Inside, the glaze runs ocean-deep, a bruise of blue and green.

A storm that cooled the shoreline in a half-reluctant sheen.

The kiln made all its alchemy, turned mud to tender stone—

The way a leaving turns to fact when time has fired it home.

~~

I use it for the ordinary keys and coins and string.

a paperclip, a subway card, a simple wedding ring

That isn’t mine, but it found its way from the drain to a mottled hue.

The bowl has learned to cradle more than just the ghost of you.

~~

Some nights I turn it in my hands, feel every hardened fault,

the places I pressed far too hard, the places lacking salt.

If love was once unshapen mud we spun without a guide,

This vessel is the part of us that somehow still survived.

~~

I will not smash or worship it, nor lock it on a shelf;

It lives beside the door with me, as mortal as myself.

A holding place, a present tense, a small, imperfect view—

this clay where I can set things down, including, slowly, you.