fired clay · oxide-red
no. 7 · st-coll.
the only stone in the cabinet made by a person. clay, scraped from a riverbank, pressed into a wooden form, and held in a kiln long enough to remember the kiln forever. fires twice: once to become brick, once to fall.
the chip on its corner was taken by the wall of the garden's east bed, where it lived for a hundred and forty years between a pebble and another brick. softer than the basalt it pretends to descend from; harder than the chalk from a few rooms over.
useful for the holding of doors, the levelling of tables, the start of one fire that should not have started.
field-note — it smells faintly of warm dust even now. that smell is older than my grandmother.