To ease my mind with craft I marked scratchy-soft linen with blue chalk to center a monogram that’s stitching now on the embroidery machine (you can hear it howling like a leaf blower) and I drew white X’s to reinforce the leather straps I’ll sew with a roller foot and a size 90 needle on my old Elna then, I examined my carefully constructed ribbon edge binding— which lies straight now (I ripped it out twice) thanks to the lines I sketched with a clear ruler and a pink chalk triangle, held between my thumb and pointer My cares fell away, like petals from a flower only pastel dust remains
Madeleine French lives in Florida and Virginia with her husband. A Best of the Net nominee, her work appears in Identity Theory, ONE ART, Dust Poetry Magazine, West Trade Review, Door Is A Jar, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Madrigal Press, and elsewhere. She is working on a full-length poetry collection.
