Listen, girl: take this thread
and these beads
and your hurt
and show me the flood
of it. Bend
your head toward the heat
of firelight, toward heated
memory, till the thread
goes damp in your hands. Bend
your fingers to pluck up the beads
that will color the flood
of your hurt.
Then make the fabric hurt
to touch. Feed the heat
of your pain into a flood
of thread
and beads.
Make me bend.
Did you know you can bend
your pain? That your hurt
could make another forehead bead
with sweat? Do you know how much heat
can burn from thread?
Show me the flood
overtaking you. Flood
this fabric with your story, bend
in the thread
of his lies, sew in the hurt
he gifted you, until its heat
splits seams, sparks beads
into starlight. Bead
in your blood, the flood
of sudden heat,
of neck-bending,
girl-breaking hurt.
Thread
everything into this shirt: his heat, your skin, each bead
of sweat, each aching thread, then fold the flood
into a pretty box, bend ribbons to bows. I’ll return your hurt.
Tara Campbell (www.taracampbell.com) is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse, and graduate of American University’s MFA in Creative Writing. She teaches creative writing at venues such as American University, Johns Hopkins University, Clarion West, The Writer’s Center, Hugo House, and the National Gallery of Art. Her sixth book, City of Dancing Gargoyles, is forthcoming from Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP) in Fall 2024.
Photo by Immo Wegmann on Unsplash
