Violet Variance

Autonomous connection,
we drew straws with shadows. Whoever could untangle from the jumble
that we knit together

could break out free, leave behind our memories
like some freakishly light child who walking even in the sludgy
wet sand after an especially high tide
leaves no footprints.

Instead, we bound together, weaving closer, sharing stories that
kept going on and on,
picked up the yarn,
the pattern,
the charm of our good qualities.

We were knitting blankets for the winter we were sure would come,

the ones years later I embraced on the tiny hills of dunes in December,
father's jacket hanging loose on narrow shoulders,
chip heavy on the weathered stock of Eastern Europeans.
How many times did I fight wind for blowing
exactly where it was meant to go-
bent into it, hellishly refusing to accept coarse
time.
There's no meaning, justice in the Gulf Stream's bend.
No cavern steals a baby seal to curse its hapless mother. Train tracks are laid over barriers,
around them if it can be helped, but sometimes
mounds
are easier to plow through than
find the rough hewn face in.