The Singing Bowl

by Kat Beyer

She’s dust and gone, but this remains: a smooth fine pot painted in her own fluid hand. Each little figure paces the circular path around the pot with her arms full, this one with minute wheat ears, each tiny grain outlined, that one with a lamb perfect to the last curl. And they sing, the words rising up from their mouths in little streams of letters we cannot translate though they look so familiar, an alphabet just round the corner from us.

They sing just on the edge of hearing. I thought I was going mad when I heard it, until I saw some children at the Museum listening, pressing their ears against the glass until the guard came and told them off.

I think she knew she would be dust. I mean, we all know it, but I think she really knew, and she knew a way around it, a way to put her voice in the clay more lasting than her perfect lines. But why? I believe that to anyone who listens, the answer is plain: she only wanted, long after her own mouth was stopped, to be heard just for a moment.