Daily Tribune“But how do you speak to a granddaughter in her dead mother's stead? Can the responsibility to the dead ever be replaced by the responsibility to the living?” ― Yiyun Li, Must I Go
"The Knitting Lesson," oil on 36 x 28 canvas, 1885 painting by Arthur Hacker.
Shannon's Fine Art Auctioneers
"The Knitting Lesson," oil on 36 x 28 canvas, 1885 painting by Arthur Hacker.
Shannon's Fine Art Auctioneers
She weaves my hair, fingers turning loom.
She practices stitches by tracing her bony finger
on the contours of my nose, my cheeks, my jaw,
as if each touch will bloom
colours in her blurry, darkening world.
As if searching for a pattern that long since
faded from view,
leaving only imprint upon memory.
When she dresses me,
the wrinkles on her skin
ripple like satin, like fine gold,
stitching me up like a ragdoll,
looking up with frozen faith, still,
in my familiar but distant dark eyes.
I am less granddaughter,
more mannequin—a model of a
modern woman that she never got
to be.
My hair is hers to tame.
She rakes through strands with
the exacting patience of an artist,
and none of the preening and tutting
of a mother.
When I leave her door and turn for a kiss,
she purses her lips.
I unravel, stitch by stitch.
She takes no delight in sewing and dressing me,
for she is a creator who made a girl,
and the girl made a doll,
and the girl has gone, leaving me behind.
Creator and doll gaze at each other,
one a mother without a child,
and the other, a child without a mother.
There is no running vein between us.
There is no place in her world for a handmade doll
like me.
I am made by fingers that trembled,
threads that are brittle,
and I will snap and fall apart in her arms.
