All in by Melanie McCabe

Sewn

SWWIM Every Day
by Melanie McCabe

by Melanie McCabe


The spool between my daughter and me unwinds and rolls
out of reach. Pulling only propels it farther, and so
I wait, my hand clenched on slack thread that now can be
no more than a reminder tied around a finger.

It would seem that I am done with sewing. My old stitches
will either hold or unravel, and I must live with knowing that
I was never much of a seamstress—though I tried.
I loved and I hated the lulling repetition of it.

This needle left in my hand is neither tool nor weapon—
only something sharp that pricks the memory of a motion
that once was effortless; seaming as natural as breathing
with the soft of that silk held close in my arms.

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Melanie McCabe's debut novel, Road Longer Than Memory, was released from Oceanview Publishing in June of 2026. She is also the author of four books of poems, most recently All The Signs Were There, which won the Longleaf Press Poetry Prize. Her memoir, His Other Life: Searching For My Father, His First Wife, and Tennessee Williams, won the 2016 University of New Orleans Press Prize.

What's Changed

SWWIM Every Day
by Melanie McCabe

by Melanie McCabe


Once I walked out into the world with flesh on, cluster
pins of nerves arranged artfully. If you had exhaled
against my shoulder or the back of my knee,
you might have watched me bloom. I weighed down
the darkening like honeysuckle or stones plinked
into pockets. I leaned hard against twilight
to leave a print of myself for you to find.

How very like a small girl to leave so many
finger smudges, my palms upturned for a wet cloth,
a murmur that wipes them clean. How very like
a ghost to tell you, here, this is my hand, and then
to pull it away. I was both and more. As fast
as I could fold, there were more paper boats to let
loose on the air. And yes, of course, I see

the flaw in that logic. I tilted my head, opened my
mouth to the breeze because I remembered kisses.
That kind of faith should have been rewarded, ought
to have made the lame lift up their pallets and stand
steady in their high heels, but instead I rolled on
my tongue no more than a whit of wind. It was a trick
to balance it there so long without swallowing.

I walked out into the world with eyes on. If you
had draped your shadow across them, I would still
have seen that it wasn’t you. You were like that, making
night blacker than it was ever intended to be. I blinked,
not to clear my sight, but to make you feel the stroke
of my lashes down your skin. You shuddered; you
were legion. I would have settled for any one of you.

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Melanie McCabe is the author of three collections of poems: The Nights Divers (Terrapin Books, 2022), What The Neighbors Know (FutureCycle Press, 2014), and History of the Body (David Robert Books, 2012). Her memoir, His Other Life: Searching For My Father, His First Wife, and Tennessee Williams, won the University of New Orleans Press Lab Prize, and a feature article about it appeared in The Washington Post in December of 2017.