The Silkworm
From the perspective of a silk weaver in 800 CE Chang'an
Baby; be a minute old–
Soon; before time runs thin again and you are
Twenty and one before me
My legacy a shawl draped onto you
Of the finest silk
A woman could spin
And it slips from you as you slip from me,
As time allows – as it has always done.
Your bare back glares
You blame me
‘Our scapula is what is left of our wings,’ I say
Yours are clipped.
Baby; do not want what I want
Should you want it – weave whatever worlds you want with it
Gorge yourself on glory
So far, so near, so close – not far enough
Grab at it with your tiny hands; squeeze it coarse and rough
By mealtime, you’ll have outgrown your rags,
Learned the ropes
You’ll have emerged from your cocoon; silver at your back, already–
For the day you wish to weave what I weave;
Want what I want
Be who I’m not
Is the day, I am sure – time will stop.
I am a mother first;
My womb a semblance of union
I had not yet known of the cages I held so close to us
The bars looked like wine glasses in my hands;
The stem, a dagger
The chalice; my own round belly
That I took a sip out of, every high noon
You made me ache.
The stories we’d craft on the satin
Felt like the lullabies I’d sing
And this city roared year after year
With the stories of our silk
The same silk spun to hate us;
That would tell the tale of the women who had come to continue in every wound;
Where pinprick after pinprick
Sharpened and stung in the same hisses of poison rebirth–
We bend to our looms again.
Take pride in it, like a pig with its belly full, harvested alive and well,
Ecstatic and breathing
Where we dance in our riches and slip on our coins
Baby; do not slip.
On your twenty-eighth day– you shed something.
A new skin, new life, something translucent
Your limp wings lay next to you in holographic whisper
Opalescent
Baby, I dreamt of you in miracles– salty shimmers, the croak of wood
And the ail of women you created
The sneer of sisterhood
The world beyond our window, and our city, and our roads;
And our feigned riches
Merely shaped by hoofprints; wheel tracks, footsteps
That fade away with every change in season, change in wind;
Baby, do not change again.
And I rest on my cushioned knees; still bruised
And I blink, and the hoofprints in the roads have changed
And a new era arrives
And I sink into the walls of this house
Where history is told in whispers far too thin
And women like me lay draped in our own skin
Too aged to be silk
Painfully human
The day I had to let my Baby go,
Out came a silkworm
Born from my womb
Coiled in my hands
My baby
Stillborn.