The Seamstress
I let my shoes spill off the frame of my feet and with
baby steps, took to the green carpet. Within two strides
a wasp caught herself between my toes, weaving her needle
in and out, through the layer of skin, up and about. And so,
although my mother’s wings would’ve taken her off
to better things, still she balanced me atop her leg, humming
a melody, and once again bouncing that knee.
She poked and strung thick thread, worn fingers pricking
one another, missing the fabric as ‘Shhhh’ she begged. In a
moment of calm, her hands finally began guiding the
needle home, but then
twisting and shouting, I broke her stitch and shook
the needle from her fingertips. Hurling her figure
against the bulkhead door, her world ceased
because mine carried on once more
Nora Smith
Nora Smith is a student at Coastal Carolina University studying English. She writes poems because I’m interested in the places where attention starts to fray, where something ordinary becomes briefly uncanny, where language misbehaves just enough to tell the truth. Lately, her work has been circling questions of belief, intimacy, and the body as a site of both evidence and doubt. I’m interested in how people try to explain what they can’t see, how memory invents its own architecture, and how humor can sit beside fear without canceling it out.