Sewn

The spool between my daughter and me unwinds and rolls
out of reach. Pulling only propels it farther, and so
I wait, my hand clenched on slack thread that now can be
no more than a reminder tied around a finger.

It would seem that I am done with sewing. My old stitches
will either hold or unravel, and I must live with knowing that
I was never much of a seamstress—though I tried.
I loved and I hated the lulling repetition of it.

This needle left in my hand is neither tool nor weapon—
only something sharp that pricks the memory of a motion
that once was effortless; seaming as natural as breathing
with the soft of that silk held close in my arms.

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Listen

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Melanie McCabe's debut novel, Road Longer Than Memory, was released from Oceanview Publishing in June of 2026. She is also the author of four books of poems, most recently All The Signs Were There, which won the Longleaf Press Poetry Prize. Her memoir, His Other Life: Searching For My Father, His First Wife, and Tennessee Williams, won the 2016 University of New Orleans Press Prize.