Tejido

(Previously Published: Prairie Margins)

Robyn Schroeder

How it must feel to unravel

language, words unspooling

in whorls of vibrant complication undone,

gilded fibers gliding through

cautious, blessed hands. And to stand

in the midst of a thousand unwoven

integers of silk and wool,

cashmere unwinding under polished fingertips,

and to continue the work,

untangling the meaning

of a single, knotted strand.

If I could only feel the threads

whispering across my palms, the

weight of a dialect meted out into yarn,

dyed fabric bleeding purple and blue into

my outstretched hands grasping at

any shred of comprehension.

But string theories catch on calloused flesh,

of which I have an abundance, undoing

the work of the past in side-tracked

spirals at clumsy feet. It is delicate

work, the unknitting of words,

pulling apart tapestries

of finest warp and weft,

unweaving language

into golden understanding.