Couldn't tell you why I cried

She has the clay on the table and she is working it, using the weight of her body, her forearms probably sore and certainly firm against the work, while I watch and drink coffee and say a little thing here and there or don’t. My speaking, it’s not the kind of thing that matters.

She has mud all over her jeans, her arms, her forehead. It is good to see, how it proves the value of a thing well done, or at least done with more care for the thing than for the self. She will not go to the wheel today, where the making becomes a matter of magic and pressure, impressive and sexually charged, sure, and never quite understandable except by the hands. Today it is something simple, made at the table.

For her I am sure this is an act of remembering, each motion done so many times over so many years as to become one long experience of ceramics classes, pots found cracked from drying overnight, a man with bone dry hands making humble admissions in the way he searches her skin and finds or does not find what he is looking for while the kiln’s flame makes proof out of their intentions. And that’s a shame, maybe, because of the way that expertise becomes a kind of dishonesty, and because this moment itself is so very beautiful, how it proves that the things that we do are worthwhile in and of themselves.

Would she make the trade, the years for the chance to see it all anew? Would I? It’s a good question that will go unasked as I watch and smile privately into my cup of coffee, my simple mug that is slightly uneven if you run your finger up the inside wall. It was a gift. Many things are.