I remember as thought it were today, the morning we moved to Cedar Rapids. The funeral day was clear and dry: a frosty autumn morning. My mother was crying.

Behind my closed, damp eyelids, I faced a terrible, inexplicable heartache. I wanted to forget everything we did together. We used to spin pottery, him sitting behind me, guiding my childishly clumsy fingers.

I picture vividly, to the point of tasting, the cold, dry smell of wet clay, and the chalky scrape of an unglazed ***. I kept one on my desk until we got settled.

I threw it into the ravine behind the new old house when I couldn't break the frosted ground for a burial. I cried, drinking in the beauty and stillness of the grey. My breath mingled with the fog.