The Glassblower's Lunch

He sets the pipe down still ticking with heat and unwraps a sandwich on wax paper, the bread soft where steam has touched it.

Around him the furnace keeps its single orange word going, a sentence that never finds its period.

All morning he has been pulling transparent stomachs from the fire, coaxing air into shapes that have no use for air.

Now he eats slowly, watching a finished vase cool on the rail, its surface remembering the breath that made it hollow, made it hold.

A fly lands on the annealing oven. It lifts off again, unburned, carrying a warmth it cannot name into the ordinary afternoon.