Barn craft

The planks are soft beneath my feet. Bits of sunlight scrub the splinters and wash the webs underneath a crumbling slant of roof and sky. Smoothed through decades, painted with wind and dust, the barn exhales into my breath and leaves me bathed in silence. 

Needle and thread, fabric and bits of the land. I stitch, I sing, I tie knots in string, tugging to secure every emotion to golden brocade, burying the loose ends in indigo and cream. There is love in this work, in this lack of thought, in the rays of warmth on happily worrying hands and weaving heart. There is closure in this craft, the spill of place into folds to take. 
It is done; it is now in a motion of its own.

I tuck away needles and brush feathers from jeans. I stand into the possibility of rain, the closing curtains of sky. I amble down a ladder, walk barefoot through the brambles to a house that has howled for my body. 

Meet me here, I say to the emptiness surrounded by wood and earth and water (full, content, infinite). I hold fabric and intention in my hand. Be my everything and let me go. Be my art and my tension. Be the dream and the now. The work is being stitched and loved and pulled taut in these gently calloused hands. I promise: though I walk, I will not leave.