The speaker is a woman paid to monogram tablecloths and napkins for another woman’s wedding, a job that will take ninety-one days. As she works, she thinks about the bride—tall, fair, marrying in June—and about the cold, ghostly flowers already woven into the linen. Her own stitching feels more alive to her than those designs, but it also becomes a way of burying private feeling. She is making something intimate for a life she will not share.
The mood is quiet and melancholy: beautiful but lonely, full of sensual detail and suppressed longing. The white roses and ribbons of the wedding feel lovely yet distant. What the speaker really feels is hidden in the stitches, folded away unseen in the bride’s chest.