| knitting | |
| Not Penelope. Not weaving, but knitting. Not to keep my suitors at bay, but to attract the one who loves me. Not to show my fidelity, but to cover my betrayal. Not a shroud for a dead father, but a casing to contain me. I knit in my lover's absence, while he travels through his life. It’s a complicated pattern, with cables and yarn overs, increases and decreases, divisions and rejoinings. I am constantly counting. He will inspect it when he returns. He will not see the flaws, the mistakes, the measurings, the alterings, the stitches I have dropped, the ones that are not there. I could easily unravel it— I'd only have to pull one thread. But whenever it begins to fray, I firmly tack the tear in place with a stitch of isolation disappointment recognition resignation. I begin to knit again, with smaller needles, a finer gauge, tighter and tighter. It covers my body. It is a shroud after all. | |