There's a particular quiet that descends after a client leaves. Not silence exactly, but a kind of humming stillness where the room feels both emptier and more charged. I'll make tea, usually. Sit with my hands wrapped around the mug and think about how bodies move through spaces, how intimacy is sometimes just attention.
I've been doing this work long enough to know it's not about sex, not really. It's about listening. About creating a pocket of time where someone can be exactly who they are. Some clients want conversation. Some want touch. Some just want to be seen without judgment.
Today was a painter from Cork. Quiet man with hands that looked like they knew how to shape things. We talked more than we touched. He told me about light in his studio, how some afternoons the clay figures he's working on seem to breathe. I recognized something of my own ceramic work in the way he described waiting for a form to emerge.
My kiln sits cool in the corner while I write this. Waiting. Just like I wait for clients, for inspiration, for the next shape of the day to reveal itself.