Sitting in the sky, nestled between galaxies, she rocks back and forth in her chair. Sometimes the back and forth movement is barely discernible. However, even if you can’t see it, it’s there. It’s her heartbeat, my cadence, your metaphysical metronome. The two needles click together as she knits. Knit one row, purl one row. Knit a country, purl a river. She’s made sweaters of raindrops. Baby booties were birthed from the Impressionist period. Socks have emerged from wars waged. She knit an i-pad cover with the thousands of petals dropped from flowers in 2003. The world is the spinning wheel; everything within it is the batting. When you were in fourth grade and took so much pride in the knowledge you were the best pusher of the tire swing? That was one cable stitch. It was navy blue. She loved that stitch. A girl’s scream in an alley transformed into the most beautiful magenta alpaca yarn. That scream became a coffee cup sleeve. The old woman doesn’t drink coffee; she prefers tea. She gifted the sleeve to the old man who kept the clocks ticking and he treasures it dearly. The universe involves a lot of ticks, clicks, taps, and clacks. A million beetles scuttling across the floor. Curled into the stardust and inky black sky, glasses perched precariously on the edge of her nose, eyes squinted, hair wrapped softly in a bun at her nape. She never lacks for projects. Imagine the smell of freshly baked bread. Of a hug. Of the safest place you can think of. She has a scarf she’s started and stopped over the course of several forevers. Each row feels like the final row, but then a tornado decimates a town, someone wins the lottery, a prisoner dies at the hand of another, someone hears a sneeze and says “bless you” to a stranger. When the world gets too sad, too full of echoes and wails and pain, her yarn spins itself thinner and thinner until it makes the webs spiders weave appear heavy and low, thunderclouds over a prairie. The lace weight is fragile. Hot cocoa by the campfire is a sturdier wool. Genocides are tangled, gnarled. They barely resemble anything. Atrocities cause her fingers to cramp. Her neck aches and tears spill from her eyes. The chair never stops moving. The universe keeps universing. The old lady in the sky keeps knitting. A person somewhere engages in rocking to seek relief from sensory overload.
©2020 by Kat Atwell. All rights reserved.