The Hands That Mold, The Clay That Speaks

The artist and the art, forever intertwined

Avika Mathur

My hands move slowly with the moldable softness of your heart.

My fingertips carve valleys and rivers, they shape ridges and crests. 

So soft you are as the touch of my fingers molds you into my creation, the manifestation of everything I've held so deep inside my heart. 

My hands are warm as they embrace your skin. 

My hands go deeper and push harder as finally the feeling of what is stuck within is able to be set free.

I press harder. Your skin cracks.

A wound of many heartbreaks, one I did not intend, yet mirrors what is within. 

I smooth it over, yet the memory stays—

a whisper in your texture, a scar in your shape. 

You are forever changed. The pressure of my touch has molded you into the shape of all that was within me. 

As I lift my hands from your warm skin, I see what I have created. 

My gaze shifts from the shape of you to what has changed in me. 

My heart feels full of you, the molded shape you have become is the very shape I have created inside. 

The clay is my creation, yet it remakes me too. 

The dirt all over my apron and hands, I realize, has gone much deeper than I once assumed. 

The scent of earth lingering in my breath is to be intertwined with every word I am to speak. 

The soft and moldable dirt pressed deep into the creases of my hands will color everything I touch. 

I step back to see what I have made, but the eyes that look upon it

are no longer the same ones that began. 

I press my hands into the clay, yet it imprints upon me too.