Clay
My mother lived a truth of ‘fine’
but that, to me
was just a lie.
I had spent six months making it,
the sculpture, I mean
born of clay and carefully crafted
it was an arm in length
but not yet wide
covering the girth of my teenage thighs.
Six months pouring every last drop
and dream, unseen
to final furnace firing.
My heavy heart held onto it –
a hard hope to believe in.
Six months in the making
it took only seconds to be destroyed.
My father, he had quite the temper
I didn’t hear him when he spoke
he’d thought I was ignoring.
So he went into the shed
to where the vessel stood
alone upon the dusty table.
He knew that I had loved the thing,
had birthed it with both hands.
I heard something break and knew what it was
I cried and ran myself, inside,
fell lifeless on my bed.
I blamed myself, of course (I lied)
‘I shouldn’t have left it out in the shed’.
But I was just as vulnerable
as my ceramic vessel.
My heart just as shallow, and as sharp
as the shape of every shard
never to be rebuilt (there is nothing quite so bashful and ashamed
as materialistic mourning).
My mother lived a truth of ‘fine’
but that, to me, was just a lie.
Home was fear
family was pain
and inside those walls,
and want of softness,
I hid.
