Excavate Her

I guide the fibers under and over. I press wool into itself with needle. I slow down my mind, my nerves, my actions. Here it comes, that wondrous thread binding me to all my mother’s that came before. It’s as if the actions of my hands awaken the braided strands between me and them. Capitalism's definition of me falls away, and I find myself reorienting to another place and time. Wet clay travels through the crevices between my fingers, as if my hands were a shifting rocky landscape responding to the earth’s core. The sound ignites a rhythm, as if Her heart was beating through me. My attention waivers, I look down. The floor is laden with plastic wrappers and cardboard boxes. The illusion disintegrates. I am a contemporary woman, pining for an ancient impression to lodge itself into my bones whilst fabricating antidotes to the turbulence of modernity.