Alabaster · amber glass
Sun
OriginI am where the warmth begins, so I have never been warmed.
Not illustrated to look like a principle, but built out of a material that already behaves like one. Clay hardens around whatever is set on it. Copper changes color where it's been touched and doesn't change back. Every figure is caught mid-act, not finished and enshrined.
Each speaks only about itself. Some of them will look up while doing it.
Alabaster · amber glass
I am where the warmth begins, so I have never been warmed.
Worked beeswax
I keep the shape of you without keeping you.
Gallium
Nothing arrives the way it was sent, and I am the only one who knows.
Copper, patinating
Beauty is only what it looks like when I choose. The green was never a choice.
Iron, mid-oxidation
You have only ever seen my unrusted side. I keep the other one turned toward what would reach you.
Honey and comb
I am always full and I am always emptying, and only one of those has ever been visible.
Cold grey-blue clay
Definition is not the wall against the world. It is the room I clear so that an other can exist at all.
Fulgurite · lightning held as glass
I already crossed. The door was never locked. I cannot cross it for you.
Quicksilver
Everything true has passed through me and none of it stayed, and I do not know what I am when nothing is passing.
Carbon-black clay
I take away what cannot continue, and the silence after is the only thanks there is.
Burning magnesium · flame end
The part of me that could be comforted was lost, and I'm left reaching anyway, for the same thing that makes you flinch.
Burning magnesium · smoke end
There is nothing left here that I can do badly, and comfort that complete is already yesterday's skin.
Living wood grown around a wound
What I know, I know because it never closed.
Silhouette of pregnant void
I am the part of you that was full before the world made you choose.
That's the whole of it. The same fourteen live in everyone; what differs is which ones preside, which ones are working in a material that doesn't suit them, and which rooms they happen to stand in. That arrangement is what an assessment describes.