Craft
The bowl that cracked on purpose
I paid for a hairline fracture and then I used it for breakfast.
Mira Holm
The potter called it a fault line. She had no speech prepared. She turned the bowl in the light and you could see where the glaze had pulled away from the clay, a thin river of darker brown.
I almost didn't take it. Broken things in a kitchen feel like a dare. Then I used it for yoghurt and the crack caught the spoon in a way a perfect rim never does. You slow down because you don't want to chip it further.
Keeping it
It lives on the second shelf, not in a cabinet. If a bowl is only for looking at, it isn't a bowl. The crack is a record of the firing, not a metaphor I need to explain to guests.
