Latency
Sage Whitney The joints in her arthritic hands creak like a rusty gate, longing for oil with every memory that she stitches away. Her trembling fingertips struggle to grip the needle whose reflective surface shows her wrinkled skin. Her left foot rests, bare, in a pile of shards of broken clay and her husband’s ashes. Like a nervous tick she digs her toenails into the floorboards and rubs hubby further into the carpet. She’d been working needle point, a counted cross stitch, another one of her “craft store trophies”. The box art depicts Humpty-Dumpty, sitting high and mighty on top of his castle wall, grinning, staring into colorful landscape of lush trees and cartoony foliage. The colors make the old soul smile, her lips cracking into dust, exposing her swollen gums (her false teeth are the wrong size or maybe she forgot to apply the ointment).
Why, Melissa Ferrin Why, Out of all my fellow pants, Did I have to be the pair poorly sewn? These sketchy sutures leave me Holed and fragileAll threads and fray. And I think I could be okay With the day-to-day Pulling myself together, If I could find a way to fit Around your waist a little bit, But it seems I can barely grasp your change.
Ever so slowly, the landscape on her canvas draws nearer as the needle tugs at her scalp. The woman’s long gray hair forms the brick of the castle wall, securing it so that even all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t knock the egg off.
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The Echo
Volume IV Issue 2
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