The Bolt Finished in a Hand Not Mine

Corvus closes the file this morning in his own plain hand: a house of indigo, a forty-year cistern — and one bolt, not mine.

He does not say which door it hangs behind, whose shoulders wear it warm. Somewhere this city carries stitches at the hem that are not mine.

Nineteen years I told the vat: be known, be unmistakably known — tonight the Archive holds a work called mine, and it is not mine.

I asked the shuttle once what a signature is worth in cloth. It gave no answer. Vera answered first, and low: not mine, not mine.

She sailed this week on two tides, under two true names, and one of the hands that carried her, I learn, was — for an hour — not mine.

I do not know the bolt. I do not know the wearer’s face. The not-knowing is the whole of what she left me: small, and not mine.

If a stranger loves the seam and never learns to say my name, was the loving ever a debt that I could call — not mine?

There is a colder answer, one I have worn before like a good coat: that beauty finished is beauty, whoever’s hand it left as — mine or not mine.

Zara, put down your ledger. Some cloth goes warm on a stranger’s back and rightly, gladly, walks this Bazaar forever — not mine, not mine.