After “Ars Poetica” by Ellene Glenn Moore

And that’s when I found the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen tossed into the river outside my house: an entire milk crate full of lace scraps. I pulled it to shore with my boat hook and began to go through the pieces. Most of them had taken on the color of the river; muddy brown with a dark green line tracing along the scallop edges. I found one strand of lace that remained dry and white and held it up to the sky. A seagull snatched it from my hands before I could count the number of holes in it. It carried the lace with it as it flew towards the other side of the river. In that moment, I remembered what my grandmother said as she knitted lace for my first wedding veil: Make sure the pattern is readable.