Written piece
The loose thread
Richard Bastille
Seychelles
About this piece
For the outside ones; the threads that refuse to lie flat. Its voice is Anansi, Ghanaian, filtered through the Seychelles mixing pot. Shunned for refusing the normal, we hold the ruler. The quilt is not a perfect sheet. It is a gathering of imperfect threads. Together, whole.
The loose thread
A stubborn thing, this thread; refusing to conform.
Antagonizing to no end, always unraveling the weave.
Anyone would pull it out, lest it cause ruin.
Sad is it not; to see the ruler of truth shunned?
Stuck in the labyrinth of lies, what thread will you pull?
So tell me seamstress; what becomes of your cloth now?
Manifold patterns that unravel, upon merely pulling a single thread.
Maps and tapestries, held together by nothing but loose strings.
Maybe that is your desire; a labyrinth of tangled strings.
Regardless of their whims, the cloth will never fail.
Relish its beauty; countless imperfect threads woven into a whole.
I have seen it, beneath the folds of the emperor's cloth.
I skirted the edge, and we held together the island carpets.
When the seamstress lost her way; we led her straight.
The patterns change 30 times a day; we are the thimble.
Forgotten, hated, but never lost. We guard the weave.