For eighty years, the velvet flowers in the back alleys have always bloomed. The silver-gray petals hide stitches, the lines of the old cloth mark names, the red ropes are wrapped with unsaid concerns, and the ink marks ooze with the sweetness of osmanthus.
Lin Wanqiu found half a velvet petal at the old site of Chen Ji Tailor Shop. The moment he touched it with his fingertips, the fire of the 27th year of the Republic of China, the unsent letters, the stitches on Baijia cloth, the cotton wool in the beak of the cloth bird... Suddenly flowed along the silver-gray thread. She saw Chen Jiu embroidering the word "home" on the blue cloth, Su Yue sewing flower seeds into the swaddling clothes, Qiu Lian piecing together rags to wait for the child to come home, and Chuntao's cloth bird holding longings across time and space in its mouth - all the cares separated by time were hidden in the thread, on the cloth, and in the core of the flower, waiting to be picked up again.
When the winding car rotates, old things and new traces are intertwined in the silver-gray thread, and the fragments scattered over the years are finally put together: the thread carries the thread, the flower returns to its roots, the so-called eternity is just that someone sewed "home" and "safety" into the fabric of time stitch by stitch.
