Salt Kiln

The potter's wheel has stopped for hours but her hands still feel it turning, phantom centrifuge in the bones of her thumbs.

She loads the kiln by lantern light, each vessel nested in its shelf of sand, mouths open as if about to speak some confession only fire can hear.

The salt goes in at cone ten — shoveled through the ports in bright arcs, sodium finding silica like a rumor finding the one ear it was meant for.

By morning the bricks tick and cool. She cracks the door to a gallery of accidents: ash-kiss, flashing, the copper-red blush no glaze recipe holds.

What she keeps is never what she planned. The cracked bowl with its jade throat. The warped cup that fits only her palm — its lip worn to silk by a kiln that knew her better than she did.