Breadcrumb #527

WILL KENTON

Does a thread care what the tapestry looks like?
It does feel the pull of the shuttlecock --

Our love for you holds the four of us together
Tight and wound -- as we are -- you bind us.

You take it as a given, this text I’ll tell you --
Our yarn, drawn from threads -- microscopic

Dyed some of us all one color, others bleeding
From brilliant to subdued, from the spindle to the shears.

This love, a single string woven through many,
Makes our fabric taut. Stretched across the loom, we vibrate

And which of us strings feels the cool rush,
The soft hissing of the three sisters’ scissors?

A sound that reminds me of waves caressing
A pebble beach; the rush of blood in my ears.

In the morning, in the hour before dawn
I feel my way to the bathroom, tense in my throat

To cough spittle and phlegm in the sink.
We two, entangled in the warp and the weft,

Are dual strands in the great web of purple linen
On which distant dreams are figured.

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