Weaves

Our grandmothers never taught us,

How to master the needle and thread.

It was hard for us to anticipate what a line of

Coiled string on a stick could be like.

Expert hands

Grandmothers rocking back and forth

On mahogany chairs

With their strings stretching along for decades,

Weaved fabrics

Into sweaters, scarves and other useful

Little things.

It was you and me

Child like minds,

Our strings didn’t stretch nearly as far.

But we tried.

A ball of string began to be loped, twirled

And pulled

Gently into each other

Slowly woven into something unknown.

The string of our lives,

We were unsure what to make of it.

Our hands had little knowledge

Of such tapestry like love.

Nervous, balmy palms became

Intertwined

Interlocking

And dancing

With each others threads

Curiously curating

Templating,

New patterns and designs,

Embellishing delicate patches

Of each other

Onto the fabric of our lives.

Little did we know that needles could pierce

or prick the tips of our fingers.

Innocently pushing each other’s

Hands into sewing boxes,

Only to pull them out

with pins,

Their tips clung onto the

Surface of skin.

Like children we were too excited

Over the pretty things.

The glint of sequins

Mirrored our earnest gaze,

Draped silks fluttered too much

And frailly strung laces

Mocking our naïve hearts.

But we never really knew how hard it was.

Grandmothers never taught us

How

To cut, stitch and sew these weaves

Without leaving stretch marks

And holes.

Our weaves could not withstand

The weather;

Dampened rain left cloths to dry musky,

The sun had bleached colourful prints to fade,

The wind brought soil and dust to settle into fine piles,

Leaving scattered garments below the washing line.

We ran around trying to catch the pieces that flew away.

It was too late to call our grandmothers.

The fibres had already pilled,

The lustre of sequins flaked away

To bare the dulled plastic.

Our threads of silk and lace

kept coming loose,

Undone.

We could have stopped the coils from unravelling

But we just watched them,

Loop by loop

Until we were left there

With nothing.

We both stared at the chair where grandmothers should have sat

To teach us their techniques.

We were left with nothing else to do,

Back

to the same unravelled strings

And needles.