The Potter
Greek, southern, sightly, skinny. Purple t-shirt and cargo shorts, covered head to toe in clay. He’d pick off fresh bits and roll them between his fingers, then throw them like spitballs at my face.
A one year affair across the Tennessee river and its ancient caves, through the barren fields of old mustard gas factories, in the old hay of the barn loft at the Cypress estate, twenty parking lots at 2AM, in an antebellum home filled with ghosts and things he’d picked up from the country roads in Tuscumbia, Alabama.
Once, in the middle of the day, spelunking through the narrow hallways of a pitch black cave, he held a flashlight and pointed to a spider’s web full of water and minerals. It looked like a giant’s diamond. Once, during the night, we set that barn on fire. The local news reported arson at a historic site the next day.
(repeat, repeat: every time I smell and touch wet clay)