The tape measure hangs like a quiet verse around her neck.
Chalk dust settles on cloth as if naming a future.
She opens a seam with the small blade called mercy,
not to cancel, only to learn where the thread went wrong.
Pins bright as morning line the edge of a stubborn hem.
The machine hums like rain that finally keeps its promise.
She turns the fabric over, reads its grain,
listens for the hidden pull where stories pucker.
In her palm, a button waits, round as a full stop,
ready to hold a thing together without shouting.
Outside, generators gossip and the sky tastes of iron.
Customers float in with pockets of weather and news,
the trousers that grew too honest at the knee,
the sleeve that forgot its pair in a bus somewhere.
She measures, nods, sets aside what can be saved,
finds room in the pattern for what a day has done.
Every stitch is a small yes.
Every knot is a lesson in staying.
The reel of thread keeps giving and giving,
a narrow road, but it reaches the harbour.
When she lifts her foot from the pedal, the room exhales.
She holds the cloth to the light and checks the line.
It is not perfect. It is faithful.
It will turn again on a living body.
She signs her work on the inside where only care can see.
Folds it, brown paper, string, a name in blue.
Outside, scooters write quick commas on the street.
The hour leans close. She does not hurry.
Tomorrow will bring another loose edge,
a rip of ordinary time wanting a hand.
She will answer with thread, with patience,
with the soft thunder of a machine at work.
This is how a city is mended,
one quiet seam you will never see.
Akindutire Elizabeth Abosede is a Lagos-based writer. She writes poems and short stories that centre on love, work, family, and many other themes. Her writing accolades include the 2025 Babatunde Oladele Prize for Fiction award (winner), the 2025 Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize (2nd Runner-Up, Poetry), and the CIPM essay competition (finalist). When she is not writing, she is watching a football match.
