Veil of the Absent Cluster

I pressed my thumb into the clay where the sand at the old port used to bear the crabs—then, now, nothing but hollow. It is a kind of ledger, but only for what’s erased. The shape would not stay upright, so I let it slouch, a basin refusing monument. Salt insisted on the fracture—always the fracture—so I gathered it, worked it thick along the rim until it threatened to bury the edge entirely. Still, I left one split open, watching how the glass pooled there, neither sealing nor quite admitting the seep. The glass is heavy with memory, cloudy with minerals I dug myself from the cistern mouth behind the station. I wanted to control the bloom, but the rim answers back, always moving, never truly tamed. The hollows inside—if you look—hold only the print of what’s gone. I do not fill them. I will not glaze them. You can see how water moves, then abandons. There is no metaphor, only loss. I set it half into stone, so it would not forget where it failed to stand.