Bottom-draw vintage silk

a motif of history

threads of long past memories

stitching together like a fustian tapestry

only to sn- sn- snag on a machine

pulling thread into a hole

where bits of time are lost

and never again told

memory colliding with reality

a silk of two lives

 

in one it adorns the head of a woman

an emblem of time and diseased cells

tying together aged, weary bones

into a pretty little flower-festooned bow

a carmine-red signet used

to hide her faltering eyes

in her grandchildren’s sight

 

a silk to mask lumps in breasts

that have spread to lungs and liver and bone and brain

but mostly it adorns the balding of her head

covering the naked and missing brown hair-threads

 

the silky pretence of a well and happy home

 

but in another time,

in a world

where clock hands unravel

to minutes and months and years

decades too long to list on paper

this silk has become a prop for a game

and is used to bandage arms

that feign broken bones

hanging the limp extremities into a silky sling

in a backdrop dripping with summer

where children of four and six tie scarves on each other

 

silk

a master of disguise and deception

still living like lies and illnesses

need no correction

now it is lost in a bottom draw

but it still remembers its original drawl

the voice of the lost and the ill and the broken –