The Tailor's Daughter

The Tailor’s Daughter

I stand in the quiet seam between who you were

and who you are becoming,

watching the morning light settle across your hair

like a soft nap on fabric waiting to be cut.

You move with the ease of someone 

who has outgrown the pattern I once traced—

the chalk lines fading, the edges yours now,

not mine.

Your dress waits on its hanger,

an applique of years layered gently

over the woman you have become.

I run my hand over the bodice,

feeling the small tensions of stitching—

the backstitch that anchors the fragile,

the dart that shapes what must hold its form,

the binding that keeps every raw edge from fraying.

I think of the work behind such things:

the bobbin spinning beneath the surface,

unseen but essential,

the feed dogs guiding the cloth forward

even when the hands above hesitate.

So much of fatherhood is like that—

quiet machinery beneath the moment,

moving you along even when I feared I was failing.

There were days I used only instinct,

trying to gather the loose threads of our lives

with clumsy fingers,

trying to mend what I’d torn

with apologies like darning stitches—

visible, imperfect,

but meant to hold.

Sometimes I used a seam ripper

on my own stubbornness,

undoing old patterns,

remaking myself for you

the way a man must when his child begins

to see him clearly.

Now you stand before the mirror,

facing yourself,

not me,

your sweet pursed buttonhole of a smile

just wide enough to let joy pass through.

The aisle awaits—

a long hem of steps folded into a future

I cannot tailor.

But pride rises in me, sharp as bias cut on the diagonal,

stronger than any fabric pulled taut in the moment before

the needle descends.

And as you walk toward a life stitched now

with another pair of hands,

I feel the last thread pull free—

not breaking,

just releasing—

so the new garment of your days

can begin.

-----

Shared with the DVerse Poets keeping me in stitches.

©2025 Christopher Reilley 

I would love to know what you thought about this piece. 

Please consider leaving a comment.