In our pottery class we were warned that pots might fling themselves off the wheel, but it was still shocking when one of mine suddenly leapt into the air and smashed itself on the floor. I mushed it back together as best I could and returned it to the wheel.

Everything was going well (as well as anything can go when you are the beginningest of beginning potters) when suddenly POOF, the pot flung itself off the wheel again and this time landed on the window ledge.

Maybe the pot didn’t want to live? I wanted her to live, though, so I nicknamed her The Child and kept going. Maybe she could be a lopsided gravy boat, maybe a lopsided vase, maybe just a lopside. The Child made it through her first firing. I painted her and glazed her and dipped the rim again and everyone in the class blessed her and off she went for her final firing.

I’m a perfectionist in one way only and for that I’m grateful, because otherwise The Child wouldn’t be sitting in my kitchen now, making me smile every time I look at her.

How to Not Be a Perfectionist, by Molly Brodak

People are vivid
and small
and don’t live
very long—

Click here for more information about poet and memoirist Molly Brodak. Today’s poem was first published in New York Tyrant on November 25, 2017, as part of a grouping called “Three Poems by Molly Brodak.”

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