Unfired Clay

a lost love story

Written by Sophia Stopper Jul 23, 2025

I'm thinking about you lately. You have these epic memories of me that I cannot grasp. I'm scrambling to remember, but I just can't. All that's there is the safety I felt because of your existence. I search for that safety in the folds of my skin, in the pockets of my floral dresses, between my thighs, sometimes when you enter my mind, I can't help but whisper your name to myself. It gives me solace. To know you're there. But you're not really. Your absence is felt like a knife to raw meat. Cutting me apart to feast upon. I write to you and it's a banquet of vulnerability. Honesty in its purest form. Why can I not just accept your silence. Why do I reach for you as though there is an open hand before me. When there is actually nothing. You give me nothing in return to the everything I bare for you. I hold no anger towards you. Only longing for connection. Closure for what's been a tumultuous journey. You hold my memories in your body like a pearl in a clamshell. Unable to open. And I just have to live with that.

I'm thirty-three these days. The same age Jesus was when he died. They say he was a carpenter in life. You and I, too, are makers of things. Of the mundane and masterwork all the same. That's what connected us at the beginning. You would make tiny unfired clay ears you would teach to listen to my silence. Observing most days. I was quiet then, shy around you because my heart was bursting. Now you're the quiet one and I just orbit you with prose and poetry. Back then I would make body sculptures of twisted forms. Who knew it would be a precursor for this illness that separates us. We are separate.

I first saw you on my twenty-first birthday. I ran from Canal Street in a long blue flower dress because the train was delayed and I didn't want to be late for Color Theory. I walked into class and sat down on my friend's lap, looked over at you and thought, “who's that?” I had never seen you before and you sure are memorable. Now I'm thirty-three and still wondering who you are. Wondering if I'll ever get the chance to know.

There's this memory I have after I released all those zines under the heteronym Sofia Mish. You gave a book to my friend whose lap I sat on about a woman who used a pseudonym to write. I always wondered if you really wanted to give it to me. You have this way of speaking to me through other outlets. “They're good at flirting”, you said to that same friend because you had to know she would tell me and her lips were, indeed, dripping with this knowledge. Everyone was on the edge of their seats about us. But nothing ever happened. Nothing beyond a deep long hug at my thesis show and then your face faded back into the crowd and I never saw you again. Thank you for coming to the show. It was really special to me that you were there. I was hoping you would read my mind whispering, “please be there” lightly in your direction even though I never actually voiced it to you. I wish you could read my mind now. But is it really necessary when I lay my heart out in this writing?

Sophia Stopper at their NYU thesis show. Photo from the archives of Judith S. Schwartz

Someone once said to me, “it sounds like you're dead to him.” And I just couldn't handle that. As a suicide survivor, those words felt violent. Violated. I cried in an alleyway in the Loop for a while talking to a different friend on the phone. They assured me that you do care about me. But how could they really know? I'm left here in the wondering if you ever think careful thoughts about me.

When I was fifteen, the person I was in love with died in a car accident. I never told him how I felt. When we were in fifth grade he had his friend ask me out for him. I said, “we're just friends” because I was nervous. There is so much regret there. I always wondered if my love could have saved him from being in that off kilter joyride on the highway. No seat belt. Thrown thirty feet from the car. In the end he died a week later. I cried in my mother's arms even though she had no idea who he was. I never talked about him until after he died. I didn't go to the funeral. I never said “goodbye”. He visits me in my dreams still. Last night he drew a picture of me painting and showed it to me. I hugged him so tight in the dream. Now that he's in the endless he watches over me. I know he does.

There's no way I can go through this life without telling you how I feel about you. You are one of the wonders of the world. My whole heart believes in you. If I'm wishing for things, it's just that we could talk. Please don't leave this life without knowing I love you. I love you like the ocean's waves continue to crash. Differently every time, but you can count on the crash. When you dip your feet in my waters, I have an undeniable chill. But the more you stay with me, the more I warm up. How I wish you would dive into these waters of mine. But wishing is for children whose eyelashes escape with a simple blow on the finger. When I see 11:11, I wish for you. I'm still a child, what can I say?

If I could have just one real wish for us. Reconciliation is one thing. I still feel as though you're that single solitary one that got away, but that's not as big as my feelings are towards just hearing you're okay. You're safe. Happy, hopefully. Maybe you think about me sometimes. In a good light and not a treacherous one. I so undoubtedly hope that I was more of a light than a darkness for you, but who's to say? Besides you, of course, and you don't say anything. So I'm just here pondering my wish with no input from you. I wish, dear, that we could write letters to each other. Back and forth. For a while. Then someday meet? Is that two wishes? I guess I'm greedy. I am greedy asking you to talk to me when you clearly want nothing to do with me. But I can still wish, can't I?