The flower on the table

The frangipani beside the deck drops its flowers all year and never seems to run out. On the way in each morning Sunisa picks one up off the boards and sets it by the hook, not as decoration, but the way some people keep a window open: so the room stays in the day it is actually in. By evening the flower has browned at the edges, and that is the hook’s own clock, more honest than the one on the wall.

It found its way into the work almost on its own. A charm cast small, five petals and a marigold heart, so that a little of the table travels out with the piece and sits on the strap wherever the bag goes next. People ask what it means. It does not mean anything grand. It means the flower was on the table the day your bag was finished, as it is on almost every day, and now it always will be.

There is a whole philosophy people try to build around slow work, and most of it is noise. The truth is smaller and better: a flower, a hook, a window left open to the sea, and one pair of hands that does not hurry because the tide already sets the pace.