Salt Kiln

The kiln breathes all night without me, its throat a cone of warped orange light. I have stacked the shelves with wet clay and now there is nothing to do but let the fire have its argument.

By morning the glaze will have chosen its own rivers — pooling in the hollow of a bowl I shaped last Tuesday, crawling the lip of a cup whose handle I nearly broke twice.

Salt thrown through the spy-hole hits the flame and scatters, a bright cough that coats every surface the way fog silvers a field you forgot you were standing in.

I sit on the cinderblock step and drink coffee that tastes like smoke. Somewhere inside, the molecular rearrangement is irreversible — silica fusing to sodium in the dark.

What I wanted was a set of cups. What I got was a lesson in standing outside a closed door, trusting the heat to finish what my hands could only begin.