after everyone has been fed and led to the water {isn’t this how we love? with our hands first and then our mouths} and the naysayers have been chased from the gates—how their hands are always eager to throw thorns over the fence, instead of holding the barbs close to their own chest where they might begin to pierce the casing, where they might be forced to listen to their own stories of loss, oh the healing that might begin to grow behind the cage of the thorax if you chose to do this each time you draw a breath, how life is work, and if we chose it so we might begin to make it easier for each body we encounter on the rock-strewn road, but only if we ate the truth of our own stories first, only if we knew the sharp sting of disappointment on our lips by its real name, and then choosing instead to say:

‘let me be kindness to you instead of a walking war. i think we might both heal this way’.

and after i have roused my body in the night to light small flames to ward off the fears, drawing cups of water from the hidden well that nobody knows about {may i never forget the way to the shaft, the secret spring, how it keeps me alive} after all of this i am out gathering baskets of scraps, i am here at the window—the open mouth to the world, watch as i stitch a life together from the gleanings, the remnants, and for-what-i-have-been-given-make-me-truly-thankful even though i do not recognise the face of it from what i etched onto the map {the tender weapon that this invocation is} watch as i show you how to hold the bread, the crumbs, folding them this way and that, turning them over and over, my fingers finding the way to a new shape, the raw, ragged beauty of it.

you would not believe what i can do with hunger.

watch as i show you how to turn it into light.

© liezel graham 2023

{ 📷 on my worktable this afternoon… also, my very lovely cup of tea in my very favourite porcelain cup}

it is still hot in Glasgow and if you know diabetes, you will know that it doesn’t tend to play well with the heat, making for blood glucose readings that are all over the place, and i think my boy is also going through a growth spurt, so we are all a bit slow and plodding our way through the last couple of days. i am working on this stitching at the moment. i was telling a friend yesterday that it is possibly the most beautiful piece of fabric that i have ever worked with. i prefer to free-stitch, not using a frame, and the fabric just falls over my hands, drapes its cool presence over the back of my hands and my wrists. it is a cotton, but unlike any i have worked with before and the lace is superb.

sharing some new words with you and hoping that you never forget the way to the hidden well that keeps you alive.

liezel