Shallow Altar

— A Poem

In my next life I will return as a trinket dish—and for once no one will ask me to explain myself.

I will be milk glass: a smooth-lipped vessel with faint translucence, like brittle dawn remembering the night.

I will reside on a bedside table where fingertips arrive heavy with rings and absences. It will fall to me to cradle the small, discarded proofs of living: a single earring without its twin, a button loosened by time, a pressed petal, a note folded small as a winter hush.

I will not move. I will not strive. I will not negotiate my worth through productivity, charm, or coherence. I will simply receive. And in receiving, I will finally understand what it means to be useful without being consumed.

Dust will settle, yes. Fine as memory.

But it will be the dust of someone else’s keeping: sediment of motions I did not initiate, effort I did not expend. And the slow drift of objects that once trembled with urgency, but now rest with the humility of retired stars.

While time forgets its own beginning, I will listen to the quiet acoustics of accumulation: the soft clink of surrender, and the steady obedience of gravity—doing what it has always done.

Perhaps someone will bend close and remark, “This little thing is beautiful,” and mean it not as appraisal but as fact. Not conditional. Not strategic. Just true in the way stones are true, and moons are unapologetic.

In this life I am ache and architecture: scaffolding around an invisible center of electricity. But as a trinket dish I will become a sanctuary for quiet gestures, a field for minute offerings: a shallow altar to the ostensibly trivial things that somehow outlast us all.

And if I ever crack, there will be dignity in the break: a fine vein appearing like a prophecy. I will be saved anyway, albeit set slightly apart. Honored for having held something once.

That, I think, will be my quiet victory.

No longer asking to be seen.

Only allowing myself to be kept.

⁂

Author’s Afterward

The lack of negative space around me in the weeks leading up to the holidays had, I dare say, made me a bit… negative.

During that stretch, I acquired the substantial inventory of a small antique shop whose owner was retiring. In the weeks that followed, I began feverishly documenting and listing what felt like an endless procession of small objects through my eBay store. In the long term, this abundance should help keep the lights on (a very good thing). But in the short term—especially for a maximalist and lifelong collector—the sudden influx of material culture, on top of an already full and intricately curated studio, left me physically and psychically engulfed: surrounded on all sides by hundreds of exquisitely breakable things, each with its own quiet gravity and, sometimes, a palpable history—including an improbable legion of unusual mid-century bisque-ware planters and trinket dishes. #!@$%

Exhibit A

Before writing this, I found myself questioning why such objects really exist. Which, inevitably, led me to question why I do either.

And then this particular milk glass dish surfaced in a dream—not asking to be useful, only to be seen. The poem arrived the way some things do: not as effort, but as recognition. As if the dish had been patiently waiting to dictate its own small gospel.

Thanks, as always, for reading. It means a lot.

Your friend in collage,