The tailor’s chalk that turned to dust

Dear Delyara, My father spent fifty years teaching me how to feel the grain of raw silk, how to cut heavy wool so it falls across a shoulder like liquid, how to build something that lasts a generation. Tonight, I stood in the back room of our workshop surrounded by mountain ranges of cheap polyester suits imported in plastic shipping crates. The boutique owners don't care about hand-stitched lapels or hand-cut canvas linings anymore; they want ninety suits a week delivered to fast-fashion chains for the price of a single bolt of good linen. My shears are sitting on the wooden cutting table, heavy and dark with oil, and my eyes burn from staring at unpaid utility bills. I spent my whole youth mastering an art that the world decided it no longer needs.