The Kiln That Holds My Fire

Inside, the fire is at work. Outside, I wait, breath held.

The kiln hums in silence, though inside the heat is enough to turn clay to stone, to coax glaze into glass. I have placed the figures there - the storytellers, the cloaked animals, the vessels that once yielded to my hands - and now I can do nothing but wait.

It is the strangest kind of waiting, this pause between what they were and what they will become. Too soon , and the heat would break them. Too soon, and patience would fail them. So I wait, as though waiting were its own act of creation.

In truth, it is not only the clay that is tested in fire. I feel my own body mirrored there - its inner heat, its endurance, its stubborn strength. The kiln fires the sculptures; life fires the woman. Both emerge changed.

And when the time finally comes to lift the lid, it is not so different from Christmas morning as a child - the rush of awe, that trembling of possibility. The fire had had its way and something new is born.