You empty the house of bags and dreams. A teapot, blue gown, a stone.
It’s easier to leave angry – slammed doors, bodies stiff and cold like the dead. Yet, when you arrive back in your mother’s home, in the vast insistent quietness, a mind loud and sore – you’ll feel then the edges of your heart aching.
You’ll remember the foolish joy, dreams of home, mornings in prayer for a miracle, early evenings of love making, feet held, your body sure of itself.
Learn, this time, to leave tenderly. No breaking and screaming, but the river of tears soaking the kitchen floor, body open with grieving and the love that remains.
*
You take this grief to the old potter’s house. Sit yourself down at the ancient wheel.
Spin your mind, spin your mind until it spirals into empty.
Make vessels of grief, tears moistening the clay, the spinning sound of your leg against the wooden body of the wheel, rhythmical against its solidity.
The old potter watches you.
Learn how to let go of the clay. You’re too quick, too rushed at the top. You have to take your hands away gently, the same way you would sneak out of your lover’s bed in the morning – tender, so as not to wake them.
You shape your sadness into a crooked bowl, thick foundation, walls too thin and almost breaking. Spacious, nevertheless. Eager to be filled and nourished.
Soon, he will prepare the kiln. The fire will make this into something solid, capable of holding.
The wheel spins
an old man watching
the girl throwing vessels of grief
whilst her grandmother prays
Stay close, my heart, to the one who knows your ways*
*line from poem by Rumi, ‘Stay close’
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