croissant
on the power of seeing through
A reflection on a croissant, an imagined pot, and a misunderstanding about limits. A piece about containment, freedom, and what happens when boundaries turn out to be transparent.
*voiceover in author’s voice
I was touching this small protest of mine when, without quite intending to, I reached out for what seemed like a pot.
It wasn’t a usual pot by any means — it was a transparent one, the kind that never fails because it never truly exists.
Inside that pot you’d find all sorts of wonders: inexplicable condiments without expiry dates, presentations long dried out, and most importantly — a croissant.
An all-butter one.
So delicious and crisp, messy, unforgiving.
An ambassador for any ruthless morning.
You’d be surprised how inevitable its demeanour becomes once it realises it’s in a pot. Just one of those.
I watched this croissant for a while. Everything was perfect, good. I think it sensed it was being held by my imaginary pot and decided not to crumble — maybe not to disturb the pot, maybe not to make a mess of itself, or maybe for reasons I’ll never know.
Perhaps that pot contained far more than I had realised.
Anyway, that pot created a lot of trouble.
Unimaginable trouble.
For the perfect croissant.
Then someone looked straight through the pot, and the croissant realised it was bottomless.
That realisation brought an unexpected freedom of movement. The vastness and vacuum displaced the stillness — rain came, then sun, then rain again, over and over — as if the pot itself were perpetuating forgiveness for everything natural.
Sunlight caught the crumbs and carried them along. Beneath it all, something came alive: movement, freshness, warmth — a kind of nest. I can still see the layers floating in space without gravity, living and moving without bounds.
Hey hey to the jam on the horizon.
And to the butter knife,
moving through space and layers,
spreading generosity
without asking permission.