You were a gift, and I was young,
and I didn’t pay you much heed until the world shut down.
I’ll never know what possessed me that day,
to pick you up and sit on my parents’ bed and write
a story in rhyme about the crushing weight of fame.
The crushing weight of fame! And I wasn’t even on that path yet.
One song led to another, and another,
and you were always there, as I took lessons, as I taught myself,
as I learned the barre chords that were so hard at first,
as we became a team
and you became my destiny.
Our greatest moment will always be that road trip,
2022, Mom was driving, you were in the backseat,
thirteen states, dozens of cities,
seven nights, five songs,
a record we didn’t break until last November.
Then we made the trip together,
down I-65 to Nashville,
where people like me take things like you
to fly or fall in front of the world.
I wondered many nights
if there were more like me or like you in this city.
I think you:
strings are replaceable,
dreams aren’t,
no matter what the labels try to convince everyone.
Like Taylor Swift, you’ve soaked up my teardrops,
only I don’t cry about boys,
but about my own fears.
Will we make it? Are we good enough,
and if we are, will we have to lose everything on the way?
But I’ll have you. I’ll always have you,
and as long as I have you,
I have my songs, and maybe that’s enough.

The shuttle flies, a silver fish,
Across the river of the warp,
To grant the wood its wooden wish,
To pull the rhythm from the harp.
Between the beams, a world is caught—
A geometry of breath and line—
Where every crossing is a thought,
And every color is a sign.

He sits within the loom’s embrace,
A shadow cast in cedar frames,
Tracing the lines across the space
To give the nameless fibers names.
With feet that dance upon the tread,
He opens wide the heavy shed,
And sends the weft, a golden thread,
To lay the restless dust to bed.

"The world is made of pull and give,"
The weaver whispers to the beam.
"It is a fragile thing to live,
To hold the edges of a dream."
He takes the wool of winter sheep,
The indigo of midnight seas,
The madder root where secrets sleep,
And binds them in his tapestries.

One thread for joy, a crimson streak,
One thread for grief, a somber grey,
The quiet words he cannot speak
Are woven in the light of day.
He beats the reed, a steady thrum,
The heartbeat of the wooden room,
Until the jagged parts become
A single spirit on the loom.

Beneath his hands, the patterns grow—
The jagged peak, the river’s bend—
The seasons in their ebb and flow,
The long road winding to the end.
And though the finished cloth is sold,
To wrap a child or shroud a king,
The weaver keeps the story’s gold,
The song the flying shuttles sing.

For when the sun begins to set,
And shadows stretch across the floor,
The weaver isn't finished yet—
He dreams of threads and nothing more.
The loom stands silent in the night,
A skeleton of wood and bone,
Waiting for the morning light
To turn the thread into a throne.