The Shape of Becoming

I sat down to make a thing.

A sensible plan.
A respectable deadline.
A beverage that was, at the time,
still warm.

The work had other ideas.

One pencil line became twenty-seven.
One colour insisted on meeting another.
The fabric argued.
The thread negotiated.
The ruler, as rulers often do,
developed an inflated sense of authority.

Hours wandered off without leaving a forwarding address.

Lunch became a rumour.

The tea achieved archaeological significance.

Somewhere between
"I'll just fix this corner" and
"Who approved this entire existence?"
I misplaced the version of myself
that watches the clock.

The peculiar thing about making
is that it rarely asks for brilliance.

It asks whether you'll stay
after the romance has packed its bags,
when only repetition,
small corrections,
and quiet stubbornness remain.

Perhaps that is why the best things
arrive looking so effortless.

No one sees the conversations
held with an inch of fabric.
The debates with a shade of blue.
The deeply personal disagreement
with a sewing machine.

By evening,
the work was not perfect.

Neither was I.

But somehow,
we had both become
slightly more ourselves.

And that, I've learned,
is the strange economy of craft:

you never finish making the object.

The object spends the whole day
making you.