The Knot

1.

The girl is given a knot

of thread the size of a boulder

with no beginning and no end and told

to wind it into a proper skein suited

for weaving by morning. The prize,

of course, is marriage.

2.

She is only ten, fifth grade,

it is the year somebody’s mom

comes to her class once a week to teach

the girls to knit. She wants to make something.

It’s the year of no money so she chooses it

for herself—not the smooth-skeined

Red Heart that unspools cleanly from its center,

but Aunt Lydia’s Rug Yarn,

only thirty-nine cents a skein, meant to be cut

into finger-length pieces and knotted

into stiff canvas mesh, then put on the floor

and walked on. She wants to make

anything.

You take what you get.

A loose-looped mess she’d have to untangle

and roll into a ball before she could take it

to school. All weekend on the living room floor

with yard-long tangles and knots the size

of softballs. One loop drawn free

brings on a paroxysm of snarl

somewhere else down the line.

All weekend on the floor.

She could fix it, she would fix it.

Don’t try to stop her.

3.

Decades later, on her way out the door,

she still is looking for the why of it all,

believing now that the husband was really

trying to get rid of her from the start.

She insists on an answer.

All he can say is this—

he doesn’t know why,

but he thinks he loves her

when he sees her working for hours

on something all laid out on the floor,

down on her hands and knees,

with next to nothing

of something impossible,

trying to make it work

and willing for anything.