Sometimes when I’m washing pottery, I feel a little guilty.

And it’s strange, because who I should feel bad for is Faith, because the dark circles under her eyes have only grown darker and circleier since she started scrubbing at an amphora handle two and a half hours ago, but instead…

Instead I kind of feel bad for the handle. It takes so much effort- or elbow grease, as I’ve heard it said- just to get a little of the dirt off the terracotta surface. And we lean over buckets of filthy water for hours in a trance, working away with out thumbs at the head of toothbrushes, only to lay down the broken pieces not much better off than we’ve found them, to cook under the hot sun. 

I understand the why, I really do. Someday, researchers who won’t remember our names and faces will pick up the pieces like communion at Sunday mass and say thank you. And we aren’t even doing it for the thank you as much as we’re doing it for the ease of the sacrament. We’re making learning less complicated, hoping that our elbow grease is enough one day ti teach us something new and true and wonderful.

But when the dirt won’t budge, it’s hard to feel like you’re really doing anything at all.

It’s like the fragments of pottery are gaslighting you, convincing you that you don’t deserve to know the secrets they’re hiding.

The scrub of a toothbrush against burnt. lay sings “I’m not telling you! I’m not telling you!” 

It’s enough to drive you crazy if you don’t bring headphones, which I always do.

I get so meditative over it that it surprises me when my fingers get frustrated without me, working the toothbrush frantically over dirt-cakes surfaces like speed is enough to rip away the years. 

“I think it’s time, Faith,” I told her in the same tone I would to someone I was walking away from a grave.

And, really, how is it any different? That amphora handle will loose itself in the archives, to be rediscovered again someday by someone with s keener eye, a softer mind. Someone who knows how to pry up the dirt with no effort at all, as easy as a breath. 

I can’t see my reflection in the water once it’s filthy, which never takes long. But I can see the way my brow is furrowed when I rub my fingers raw against a shard, can see the way my eyes roll when I see a tiny sliver of red among all the gray and realize I have to scrub that much harder.

Sometimes I pull a piece from the murky water and have to refrain myself from asking, “Do you even want to be clean?”

Because who am I to say that these broken dishes weren’t put into the ground on purpose, like wildflower seeds promising to bring more and new and spring?

Anyway, Faith’s nails scratch at the handle and don’t make a dent, and I can feel my fingers start to bleed. 

-Abby