Potter’s Wheel

Andrea Janelle Dickens

An ocean crashes against hot volcanic rock, a shore still being formed. Somewhere the rain grinds down a hillside towards the sea. My hand pours water onto clay, centers it, one deft move, this leaning-in and waiting still.

In my sketchbook, a drawing, smeared graphite wobbles. This mound of clay will never bear resemblance to any such designs. Each movement of my fingers is a door to a different form.

Each leaves its mark, which I can keep or scrape away with metal ribs. We shape clay into a pot, Lao Tzu said, but we really seek the emptiness within. Everything disappears into an ocean for a moment.

The picture fades into the distance, the past horizon towards which I once shaped this clay. It always falls short, long. It falls into a universe no sketched image will ever conjure up. My fingers trace a koru as they travel outwards, the sign of peace, journey, harmony— yet I know nothing but to work in tandem with the clay, negotiating new agreements through each piece. The wheel slows, my hands coax slippery clay out some more. i feel so scared when i get hungry because i am always hoping to use my teeth for other, more exciting things. to sink them into the salty, taut flesh & to moisten my lips with the blood & to rearrange the guts in a way that i understand— that would be a dream come true, and a far better use of my time than pacing the kitchen and opening cabinets just to shut them again. searching for food that is safe, searching for food at all. and i am always looking for a way to shout, but quietly, because i am equally scared of being alone as i am of asking for help. and it’s sad, but merely ten minutes of attention can satisfy me for two whole days before the doubt and the loneliness respawn and i am once again trying to shout without being too loud. i need it. i need it. but no one will ever know unless i beg, beg like the dog whining to be let back inside— he promises he’ll be good, he’ll behave, he won’t make a mess or get too excited or jump on visitors when saying hello. no one will know unless i’m on my knees, and by that time i’m so far gone that so much as a single glance in my direction will have me panting & thumping my tail against the floor. i am sorry for being too loud when you come around. but you make me want to use my teeth for all the right reasons— and who am i to deny myself the simple pleasure of taking a bite?

The mud forms a slow disc; a rim appears, jutting upwards. Little pieces of this universe stick between my fingers. I have to dip them in the slip bucket, remove the world before it becomes too much and skews my grasp.

The plate laid out, in repeated trips from center to edge, I compress and re-compress to echo the form I’ve conjured up, as if committing it to memory. Finished, my fingers skid one last time across the surface of the plate, like the call of a gull across the shore at sunfall.