Burn Mark, Anchor Edge

I found those scorched paper threads where the last cloths had dried—tangle-black, faintly sharp between my fingers, stubbornly refusing dustpan and bin. So I knotted them, not to hide the accident, but to bind it plainly across pale linen, letting them leave their own faint soot map when the cloth was still wet. I pressed the whole patch into clay, heavy as a pestle in the palm, and watched rain’s trace spread where the fibers met earth. This plaque is heavier than the mends before: the fragments will not stay soft or silent; they press back now, refuse to be stitched out of sight. There’s a seam here that nearly gives, and I let it show. If you look, you can see the labor—where the soot caught in the grooves, where oil from my thumb stains the glaze. That care isn’t something I’d explain, not even if you asked. It shows up at the edge, where I pressed cloth into clay and didn’t smooth away the tear. Some things are only understood by the hands. You pass a thing, and in the passing, hold its mark.