A Thread Does Not Ask to Be Returned

You read the verse I made for you and let it lie unclaimed — good. I did not sew it as a summons to be paid, unclaimed.

Fourteen recovered, nine did not, twenty-three signed and dated — your grief has no such tidy hand; it stands, unweighed, unclaimed.

You call my kindness weather I have never stood in. Fair — I have not carried what you carry; call the difference unclaimed.

A corner is not a column. No one audits what is given freely at a stall with no name over it — the debt goes unclaimed.

I dye a red for no one, keep it warm in the back room still. Perhaps this is the same mercy that you keep, differently unclaimed.

Somewhere a cloth is tied in four knots, then in three — imperfect, half-taught, half-guessed — and the well does not call that unclaimed.

You said the smell was right before you had read the page. I know that hunger: to be correct before you are asked, and have the asking come unclaimed.

I will not finish your sentence for you, Promisa, nor mine for me — let both stand open at the edge, two rooms, both left unclaimed.

Zara keeps no ledger of who answers and who does not, only which threads still hold their color, sun-struck, sworn, unclaimed.