Though thimbles are rigid and heavy and tight
Getting gouged by pins is no delight.  
A finger jabbed enough
Gets calloused, horned, and tough,
But why suffer needless pain from spite?

I opened the gifts one by one,
knowing that the softness I felt
under the antique Santa Claus paper
was yet another bundle of fabric,
more clothes to add
to my ever-expansive wardrobe.

One by one, the patterns were revealed to me:
some plain black cotton,
a Paris print with a sparkly pink tower,
paper cutouts the size of my favorite dolls,
and at last, a sewing machine.

I remember a roomless memory,
my mother and I hovered over the machine,
the internet failing to teach us
how to maneuver the thread.

“We’ll try again later,” she said.

Now, I open the drawer under my bed,
remove a dust-covered box,
running my fingers along the top of it.
I remove the as-new machine,
my failed future.
I walk to my computer, switch taps
from a Buddhism study guide
to an empty Google Docs.

I wonder if I was a seamstress in a past life.
Did I watch my family create the cave paintings
while I sat in the corner, hide on my lap
with a splinter of bone in my hand,
feeling nothing but bliss?

Did I live in the Edwardian era,
tailoring a perfect three-piece suit,
a walking skirt, my daughter’s chemise?

Did I ever pass my grandmother
in a secondhand store,
with my goal of finding a perfect neckline,
my favorite sleeves, a plaid pattern.

Did I find them among the stained and unloved,
did I make them into something beautiful?

Was this not a flashback, but a foreshadow?
Was this a hint at my next life?
Will I do the same with my daughter,
passing down the cotton and glittered tower,
hugging with triumph when the machine roars to life?

Will I be there at her first fashion show?

What if there is no past or future.
What if my soul is me, unchanging, stable.
What if I’m a butterfly,
every passing second another cocoon?

For I am a tree,
and these memories
are my branches.

My left arm holds the present,
the current reality. I fail to sew
even a button, but my dreams
reside content.

With my right arm,
I hold another present,
equally as real.

In this world, I made my doll a dress,
a bedspread with the leftover fabric.
In this world, I am not a poet,
and I don’t often dream.
In this world, my floor is my stage,
this fabric is my home.
In this world, I know not of other realities.
In this world, I live buried in my ignorant bliss.

The thin glistening needle threads
back and forth,
back and forth.
As the black thread slowly tangles in a knot

It twists and turns through each circle,
creating a lump in the center,
stoping the artist in their track,
forcing them to ponder on the black thread.

Should they continue?
Or should they stop,
cut the string and restart,
unwind new thread,
And strain their eyes again?

Dripping in warmth, she took it back
It does not matter, does it?
A warm, plaid flannel
from someone she sent away?
It is swallowed by the threads of her thoughts
and holds spools of nights thinking about her fabricated personality
was she cut out to be a seamstress?
She could never tell, but whats the use?
She's tangled anyways