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Poetry on Lit Up
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The jolt of bright metal piercing my nail,
it should have woken me up.
Why didn’t it?
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…
I sewed through my finger once.
The machine snarled like a drill
then stuttered and stopped with a thud
releasing the yowl of my dying animal:
All my inner wounds burst free at once,
my voice holding secrets of the future.
My husband tugged the needle out,
roughly twisting with a pair of pliers.
Even pliers come as couples.
It’s hard to separate one thing
from another,
and then, suddenly,
it’s not.
Except there’s pain
and a slow-healing wound.
I sewed through my finger
after my friend told me
that her mother had done so,
the idea was threaded like this.
Her mother knew all about sewing,
and that old blue sewing machine
was a gift from her ‘to a good home’…
