Staccato Stitch

I am the rhythm she cannot escape,

A sharp mechanical silver pulse stitching through the restless sounds of her intents.

She hunches low to reach me, a curve of bone that threatens to snap her quiet desperations,

Feeding me the impenetrable silk of her own mind. 

Unknowing or unconcerned to the impossibility of such a task.

Click. Clack. The needle bites down with hesitation,

A frantic shift between legato and staccato stitching thoughts into rows 

Like bars on windows,

My body became a prison with her name scratched on the walls but–

The bars never seeming straight enough, 

To protect her from invisible inmates, 

And let her sleep peacefully through the night.

Unknown to her is the soft mercy and embrace of quiet wool,

Where others see ordinary garments, she sees a map of her failures,

Capital of which are seams. 

She grips a copper ripper like a scalpel

Her palms slick with sweat of a thousand ‘what ifs’

Under her distress the bright metal blooms with bitter evergreen exterior–

The color of her that only appears when work is never finished.

She proceeds to wring the threads dry and undone, 

Twisting the fabric until the loops scream,

Unaware of the gold band tightening around her finger like a tourniquet, 

As she meticulously unmake the memories of yesterday, 

To connect the slant of meaning only she can feel,

Feelings so intense one would think her a ruler. 

She treats her history like a cheap poorly fitted sleeve.

Always too tight, always catching on the spirit 

Leaving snags of vulnerability, the pulled strings drooping like wrinkles of her knitted brow.

There are hours when I think the engine of her heart begins to overheat. 

In outrage and overwhelm she strikes the plastic frame, cursing my metal needle, 

Sobbing that I have betrayed Earth’s pattern 

She measures our worth in millimeters and straight seams. 

Her fingers tremble over the lines like a bobbin spun and withering thin,

Fingers blending with her craft until I cannot tell where machine ends and 

Woman begins 

The closet across from me starves with aching hunger whilst the scrap pile swells, 

A heaping monstrosity of merging fabrics calling out to be remembered as ‘what once was’

Then the bell rings 

     Week by day,

          Hour by minute, 

She brings back finished works to tear them open again, 

Captivated by the illusive entity of a perfect stitch.

I watch her tremble, and I wonder–

If she would only let the hem fray, 

If some stranger would take her silks and dance, 

Perhaps she’d see that life is not a garment to be rendered and fixed, 

But a fabric meant to be worn thin by the moonlight and cool air. 

Synopsis of my favorite parts of this poem (from the author):

• This poem takes a page out of Sylvia Plath’s book from her poem “Mirror.” In this poem, the sewing machine is the speaker, which I did to create this distance from the woman. As the reader, you never fully understand her, but you want to try to; it moves you to sympathize and want to help her. But it also shows some dynamics we may overlook with our personal struggles, like how they affect other people but do not deter them from us; rather, they deepen an understanding and will to help. I also felt it helped to emphasize some of the mechanical nature of cycles in anxiety and perfectionism because you see sewing through the eyes of a machine that theoretically fully understands it.
• The woman’s imprisonment is mainly to display both the comfort and agony that can be found in anxiety. At first it’s plainly stated that she’s trying to escape, which outlines the main goal, which is to try and overcome our anxiety, but then it’s shown that she wants the bars of her prison to be straight. While this was meant to show some of the protective qualities of anxiety, people often develop anxiety as a way to protect themselves from harm, and so because of this, overcoming it can also feel unsafe, and steps we take to overcome it can sometimes worsen and trigger it. So this is mimicked by the woman’s desire for her prison to keep her barred in completely, not fragmented or crooked, from these “invisible inmates” who represent the possibilities we assume but that don’t really exist. This effectively creates a paradox where her imprisonment is both her peace and threat.
• The woman is a morphing entity; we see how the woman starts out a prisoner, but then she is the green that oxidizes on a coin, then she takes on the actions of a ruler, and next her brows are downturned like the snags on her sweater, until finally in the 5th stanza the sewing machine admits it cannot distinguish her from a machine. I did this to emulate how we can often get lost in our anxiety and perfectionism. I find I personally take on almost this role that is so hypercritical, something I ordinarily am not, and so this bridge between the human and the tools she uses displays that.
• Sound in this poem was very significant; starting in the 2nd line, there’s heavy sibilance of S, which mimics the woman’s sewing and how it’s jolting– almost confrontational with how boldly stated the sound is. But specifically the s mirrors the sound of a needle as it sews, a very distinct sound on a sewing machine as opposed to sewing by hand, which of course makes no sound. The intention of this is to show the restless nature of productivity, another aspect for me of anxiety. Specifically as a creative person, I find that while creation is my lifeline, it’s chaotic and unapproachable from the outside and can easily slip into a grey area of critiquing and revising to a level that is mentally draining. The second stanza then shows the absence of sound with the wool, an idealistic life where perhaps your mind is a little less consuming.
• The ring transforms from an action to a physical item and finally sounds, for which I’ll give credit where it’s due. This was actually not my idea but Mrs. Richards’s, but here’s how I incorporated this concept. Initially, wringing is an action taken by the woman against the threads, which shows the odd nature by which she deconstructs her garments. It represents this action whereby, by tearing the garments, she’s wringing out her heart, bleeding it dry of life. It represents the battle between anxiety and the pursuit of love/passions. However, wring then quickly transforms into a physical ring that the thread makes, showing how her actions bind her much like a ring in marriage might bind you to your partner; she’s become married to her struggle. This is further emphasized when the speaker says the ring is like a tourniquet. It’s preventing her from bleeding out, but it is also the spawn of the cause for her wounds. Finally, the ring becomes the sound of a bell that keeps time. Sound in this poem represents cycles, and so this final transition into sound shows how it will repeat with time, but also I never state whether the bell is rung by her or systematically, which I did to allow the reader to decide who determines their struggle: is it their own pace or that of another?
• My favorite stanza in this poem is easily stanza 4; this stanza for me was a way of summing up the degradation of anxiety. It often feels to me like I can look back at my whole history, either a two-minute conversation or a month-long decision, and boil it down to something worthless– the cheap sleeve. Every decision made, every word chosen, every split second of talking over someone is a mistake like a poorly fitted sleeve made only by some act of carelessness. This carelessness causes the discomfort of overthinking in my head, feeling like the thoughts are too tight for your being. It shows my personal struggle with how anxiety for me is not just worrying, but it’s about ultimately pinning the blame on myself—on the “creator/artist,” so to say—and how the implication of this is often overwhelming. It’s really just a beautiful but tragic set of lines.
• I made a parallel using the word “thin.” It’s first used to describe the woman’s hands, showing how she’s wearing herself down, but it is then later used to describe her garments, revealing the irony in how she allows herself to be worn thin when it is the garment that ought to fulfill this role.
• While I have much more I could probably discuss, I’ll leave it with why I chose the ending I did. The end returns to the most basic purpose of a garment. It is something to be worn, something to be lived in, showing how ultimately it is the natural act of a stranger– like putting on a dress– that can pull you out from anxiety. It is the joy of other people’s dancing that can lead to tranquility.