Created by Adey Bee

For Those Whose Chairs Remain

In the low hum of a quiet room,
we gather —
hands wrapped in threads,
a hush stitched between breaths.

Each pennant begins in silence —
a square, a strip, a soft-held piece,
blank but expectant,
open to what hands will make of it.

We do not name.
We do not frame.
But in the warp and weft,
something begins —
shapes from shadows,
gestures caught in thread,
a shared glance outlined in frayed indigo,
a hush of lapis
where someone once sat.

Conversation grows in the rhythm —
needle, pull, pause —
words rising like steam
from teacups cooling beside the cloth.
Stories unfurl slowly,
stitched into the seams
between patterns and missteps.
Hope passes hand to hand,
soft as silk,
strong as space held gently.

Sometimes, the needle slips —
a prick of pain
where we didn’t expect it.
We flinch, we breathe,
we learn to stitch around the hurt,
not to avoid it,
but to acknowledge where it lives.

Some chairs remain at the table.
We leave them there.
The fabric remembers —
in threads loosened,
not lost.

We do not seek perfection.
We let the thread wander,
tangle, snag —
because it is in the fray
that we find each other.

What we make is not one voice,
but a chorus,
a patchwork of presence —
where now touches then,
and leans into what could be —
held together by time,
by care,
by the slow magic
of making something together.

We are not single strands,
but a skein —
twisted, dyed, and drawn close,
stronger in the winding,
unravelled by life’s warp,
and even then,
capable of being threaded back again.

Adey Bee April 2025 ©