Summer Mending
Knees and palms on wash-worn
wool, I am a blind cub crawling
into the split-open ribs of his mother.
I press my face against a moon-scratched window
and smell summer’s dust, seven stories
up. The night is murky. Sometimes
when the shower’s shrouded in fog and I squint
just enough for the world to blur and ask the mirror
if I can close my eyes and melt back into a puddle
of primordial soup and fix every mistake, if I can give
back everything I shouldn’t have, if I can sleep
and wake up a crow perched on tombstone, I’ll find
the rain has passed. Last summer, Grandmother crowned
me Woman when I stained my fingers green with the rust
from her treadle, the sound of cast iron straining, gears
groaning as cotton fuzz spilled, sinew in formaldehyde,
mycelium roots, dried up tendrils, limp claws around chipped
metal, little angels of destruction and ruffled feathers charred
in the morning air. I wonder what I will destroy
once my fibers tear. Once my sleeves catch fire and burn
down Grandmother’s robin blue house. I imagine
someday, when my lips split, little truths
splattering on white marble, oil spill puddles
and spots like grease and Grandmother will scrub me off
the floor and bury her sweet girl in a redwood coffin
and I will stitch cotton into dresses and ask her why
isn’t the reverse lever working? How do I replace a broken
needle? What if the thread snaps? Can you help me
untangle the bobbin? Can you fix this? Can you forgive me?
Noah Ma won first place in the Charles Crupi Memorial Poetry Contest for Michigan High School students. For more information on the contest, please visit the Albion College English Department website.
The Albion Review 