The green shoot through the river mud

Dear Delyara, For years, whenever the monsoon rains started hitting the tin roof of my small pottery shop, my mind would instantly flash back to the night the embankment collapsed and swept away my family’s entire farm, leaving me clinging to a banana trunk in the pitch black for fourteen hours. I used to lock the doors and hide under the wooden bed, gasping for breath as if the mud was coming over my mouth again. But this afternoon, as the sky broke open and torrential water poured down the street, I stayed right at my wheel. I kept my hands steady on the wet clay, shaping a flower vase while the thunder shook the hills. The water outside was just rain, the mud on my wheel was just earth, and I was entirely safe.