by Juanita Asapokhai ’20
Winner- Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Contest
because my father’s sister died I have spent a couple compulsory hours visiting grief in its house
with its door that always opens but is sticky for me
relegated primarily to the closet but free to roam about the parlor because the grief is not my own
a hand-me-down
a sneaky tax that comes along with loving someone other than yourself
often tacked on long after purchase so we forget that
pain is private in its intensity but wide in its range ––
earth to every end of thread that pulled from the needles inside aunty’s heart
to an unknown fabric destination,
we must stop sewing, we are mourning the seamstress now. and yet–what to do with all this string and no pin cushion? many of us afraid of the mechanical
jab of the sewing machine
fear more the act of going back to work
or accepting the reality of scissors
or knowing that the job is done but our
hands cannot stop tugging cannot stop pulling cannot stop pleading for
more thread
and please send along the thimble as
all this blood will deeply stain the cloth.