With threads, hair, and twisted fabric, I weave in fragments of myself, bits of other people. I weave in lies, and I weave in love, and in the end, it’s hard to know if one keeps me warmer than the other. And when I’m done, I lift the rug from the loom and study it in my fingers. When I back away five feet, it’s bluer or more knotted than I’d remembered. And from twenty feet, it grins at me when all along, I’d thought it pouty. I ask myself, “Is that my rug?” But like anything I make, the rug is never mine. I tell my eyes not to see so much at one time. I flip it over, and from the back, it weeps like someone lost. Like all lies, loves, stories, it is imperfect, but I could walk on it. I could fold it over the edge of my bed and use it for a blanket or hang it on the wall. Instead, I wrap it over my shoulders, wear it like a shield, covering myself with a tapestry of views. Tell me the story, Nanna, ” I used to beg my grandma, leaning against her in the porch swing, my head nuzzling into the space where her long arm connected to her shoulder, and she’d wrap that arm around me and rub my thigh as though it were a wrinkled napkin that she could straighten out if she worked on it long enough.
