The purpose of pottery is to mold clay into a form the creator likes best
Shape with perfect poise
Keep your form consistent
Aesthetically pleasing, elegant, shown off as a perfectly crafted work of art
Shatter the death-fodder that is imperfect vases or pots full of air pockets
‘unique’ and ‘ugly’ share allowance in your dictionary
Shape with your aching hands and quivering back and bleary eyes
Artisans can be surprisingly judgemental
You never were much good at pottery
And so as your first work I sit on the shelf above your wretched old workbench
I catch your tears of longing for me to take a different form
As you totter about this studio you call home
One day the tears I catch will overflow and become my own
I will shatter from the pitch of your maddened screams
I will crumble from the slam of your fist on this tilted platform
You will look back on me once and then never speak of me again
You toss me into a room that you incessantly mask with pretty parchment and ribbons
It is a room infested with your likeness
Slip blood and terracotta skin fill my hollow head that I’d preconceived was well stuffed
Pottery was never about shaping me, it was changing who you once were
Because you hated it