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Crewel
My mother sewed air raids,
yellow zig zags, blue rumbles,
people running, red.
No language, but stitches
pulled in
and pulled out,
needle a tongue.
At thirty, she left England,
where she had hidden
in underground shelters
from fatal thunder--
hunger, the constant--
sailed home to Cape Town,
guavas, avocados, and quiet.
In that quiet a bus roared.
She shot under a table, crouched,
her left eye trembling.
That eye signaled trouble when
I was late coming home,
like the silence of a Doodlebug
before it exploded.
In her mind, she was shaking,
always in that air raid shelter.
I couldn’t get her out.
Published in Passager
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