santos scribes

begins a vacant sweater 

empty, inherited wool  

itchy and unbecoming 

easily caught up, 

I tangle  

and  

hang  

by each thread 

pilled and snagging 

on every pattern 

every thorn 

I have.   

the threads expose my inaptitude 

bring light and shadow to my weakest equilibriums. 

I find (in time) 

a pencil eraser worth  

of footing   

and the sweater turns 

to sod then 

wet  

weighted 

fleeced  

a cemented rotting cloak  

I see it now  

in other people’s eyes 

I am not the same 

“irrevocable changed” 

they call it. 

the sweater begins to dry  

to shrink  

too small 

haphazardly gaping 

the soft belly  

at my hollowed hips  

a dimpling oscillation, 

another layer 

of  

exposed 

nerve  

endings.  

and so, yes-

I do feel it  

when it moves  

from my shoulders  

to my center  

a loose knot  

of certain certainty 

I adapt (not perish) 

keep caped & covered 

in certain (fixed) company 

I let every wilted brilliant blue  

and hardened eggshell gray  

drape precociously behind.  

with shame  

and life-affirming  

resignation 

I master the inability  

to leave it  

for moments 

then minutes 

then hours and maybe 

someday  

something  

like  

a day  

for  

a  

time.  

neatly folded   

in my top dresser drawer  

I slip out from beneath it 

never once forgetting it is there 

where I left it  

until later 

when I find 

my threadbare sweater 

lumped together  

with the soiled socks  

& other underthings  

the bottom of that dirtied laundry pile 

riddles me breathless with my own guilt and longing 

who am I to forget  

(for even an afternoon) 

the gravity of impermanence? 

I bend to knell 

bring the wrung ragged sweater  

to my clichéd  

tear-streaked cheeks 

I drink dutifully and fully  

the musty sameness 

this behavior creates 

-not respite, but something like it.

the continuum continues like this 

: struggle-weight-expectation-guilt  

shameful-hand and knees 

not quite crawling 

but bent breath 

forward and back  

back  

back 

back  

and then forward forward, back  

and then finally 

a new shade of black

the sweater is here  

but I cannot place it.

its presence less obvious 

then it once was.  

and so too, then does the scarf arrive. 

I smile in recognition of the  

tattered wind thrown blues  

the softest grays of the deepest purpled ocean  

I find it fills the top of my bedside basket, easily 

its faded worn brawn, 

seaside shingles, left salty and porous  

beneath a ruthless sun  

its advent brings with it a knowing,  

an understated understanding   

-the grief is there to hold on to  

like an anchor, like a love  

its shape & form will change (a sweater to a scarf) 

its color (an ocean’s dusk, an ocean’s dawn) 

its weight (a ton of bricks, a ton of feathers)  

its size (Earth & her Moon) 

and so too will I stay, will I hold

a piece of it, a piece of you 

forever.  

about this writing

I first started this poem about seven or eight years ago. I was in the early years of the tremendous, unexpected loss of my adoptive mother Christine. Back then the poem was probably a quarter of the length it is now & only a fraction of the truth, but these things: Grief, Life, Love, Perspective, take time and so here we are. Coincidentally (even though I do not believe in coincidence) today is a huge day in my own personal history. March 4th marks the 43rd year of the beginning of the end of a life and a family I had prior to my adoption in 1988. That grief, that loss is something I carry well even all these years later but like the sweater of this poem, most days it’s a cherished scarf. If you’re still reading, thank you! I hope you are taking good care of yourself & each other out there in the wild xo, Stephanie