Stitching the Bride
I demand a creature of another sex,
but as hideous as myself . . .
— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
And sleepless once when the needle slipped, he could not
say whether it pierced his hand or was at that moment
born from it, stitching
her even through his dreams, the knots
invisible, revelatory: asymmetrical
breasts, knuckles, eyelid flaps with their little fringe,
and she all the while coming nearer,
approaching with incalculable slowness
to join him in the fleshly sampler
where a seam invokes the soul.
He belongs to her.
He is either her mother or her only child.
And the other one peeking hungrily through the lattice
must be her twin, he looks so much like her.