Edge Where Hands Gather

I let the cloth decide. That’s how this piece began—by stacking scraps, not thinking about tidy lines, just listening to how the edges slid past each other, how they’d refuse to lie flat. The shape bowed out, as thresholds do when they’ve taken so many feet, so many hands passing bowls and tools across the years. There’s my mother’s spool, or what’s left of it, nested in memory inside one seam—her label faded, but enough for my thumb to feel. Some edges patched twice, some just once, stains barely visible, but I remember each time I pressed the cloth between my fingers, tugging a thread flat before stitching. The ceramic shards come after, breaking what’s soft and mending it again. When I look at the whole, I see not what’s missing but what’s insistently held—awkward, maybe, but cared for. When someone asks me why, I can only say: hands know what is worth saving. The labor shows. If you see a patched place, you’re seeing a story that won’t be hidden.