Carla stood in the middle of her cramped studio, bare feet cold on the linoleum floor. In her hands, she held a small, lumpy object no bigger than a coffee mug. To anyone else, it might have looked like a failed pottery experiment—a grayish coil of clay with uneven ridges and a strange, thumb-sized dent in the side.
Carla smiled.
That night, after the house went dark, Carla carried the piece to the kitchen table. Under the single pendant light, she turned it slowly. The dent. The ridges. The way the light pooled in the shallow curve. She thought about the gallery submission she would never send, the residency she would never apply for, the person she used to be before dishes and laundry and the endless math of bedtime. carla piece of art