I broke a pot the other day, not just any pot but a ceramic Acoma vessel I inherited after my father died decades ago. I snatched something from the shelf, barely tapping the little seed jar, its mouth big enough for a finger, maybe two. It rocked one way and then the other. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something midair, wondered for half a second what I’d set free. Then, a singular pop on the floor. I knew.
The term is ‘potsherd’. Not shard. It is its own category of broken thing.
I’ve been looking at potsherds for a long time, parts of the desert strewn and sprinkled with pieces of broken jars, bowls, and cups from the early millennia common era, Pueblo ancestry. Trade routes moved ceramics through passes and along rivers, northern Mexican wares found in Utah, Colorado wares in southern Arizona. Some places are carpeted in broken pieces. Walking onto a ruined pueblo at the edge of
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