She Holds It Like a Chastened Bloom

She holds it like a chastened bloom
 pressed flat by winter’s heavy palm—
 a slip of lace, a breath of loom,
 a quiet relic asking calm.

Yet through its threads, a ghostly rose
 has blossomed where her breath had bled;
 it stains the cloth in tender throes,
 a muted script her lungs have read.

No vivid cry of crimson fire,
 no theatrical, artful mark—
 but pale confession of the pyre
 that smolders softly in the dark.

She folds it once, as ladies do,
 with fingers trained in old refrains—
 as though propriety could subdue
 the fragile ache that still remains.

O wan embroidery of pain,
 O sigh caught in a woven net—
 your color fades like autumn rain,
 but tells a truth she can’t forget.

And in her hand, the cloth becomes
 a quiet treaty with her years:
 a place where all her sorrow hums
 yet finds its dignity in tears.

So rests the lace, so rests her breath—
 the world still swirling, sharp and swift—
 while she, acquainted well with death,
 offers the handkerchief as gift—

Not one of tragedy alone,
 nor some tragic heroine’s art,
 but fabric where her life is sewn
 with stubborn beauty, stitched by heart.