Braid
Shoulders knobbed against
a slat-backed chair,
the temples tugged, a pull
at the nape, you felt the up-
sweep as she smoothed the fine
wisps back and tucked
yank into yank
and a third into that
until the consecutive
dodges of thumbs and first
fingers gathered,
fraying and filing
to their end—ended
in an ornament that, suspended,
looked ridiculous, even
on a child who mostly
set forth with
what was called
a “finished” look, some
loose ends in order where
others were not
and a slight weight below
the nape’s pull. The view
others had of it
was invisible to you.
It made something there
where there would have been
a blank—now instead
a kind of face
sent from woman to
woman like a duty,
an obstinate
duty to pattern.
It’s too simple to see
one thing rather
than another, a wish
protruding once it’s been
suppressed, a vise that holds
a thought in its proper
place until it bobs
to the surface
of a generally balmy
sea. Women and
woman only a letter
away—a strand gets
mixed, then mixed
right out of the heaven
of perfect fit;
one kind of accident
turns into another.
The whole head throbs for days.
Black and white are woven
into gray the way
hyperbole has no chance
once it’s juxtaposed
to reason—negation
just a thread among
the available options
and hope itself apparent
there in the very
notion a made thing can last.
Tougher, coarser, split
weave in the years. Shorter,
longer, shorter, the brain
bound to its anchor.
The brushed-out waves
with their rick-rack
shadows, a thread
inside the case,
the case inside
the locket, the locket
beneath the yoke.
All the effort
to save in itself
a form of loss.
You can tell a story
many ways. You can leave
something out or put
something in; you can fool
yourself and hide.
You can shake out
the form or try
to manage every wisp,
but the latter will
only bring you pain.
You went under
the hand and eye of another
and the tether cannot
be undone.
Copyright Credit: Susan Stewart, “Braid” from Columbarium (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003). Copyright © 2003 by the University of Chicago. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
Source: Columbarium (The University of Chicago Press, 2003)