Stone Mirrors by Jeannine Atkins

Author:Jeannine Atkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

The Art of Disappearance

Edmonia fetches clothes to be mended

from brick houses with little land between.

She carries baskets past ladies who are tight-belted,

buckled, buttoned, their necks straight below hats

burdened with flowers cut from cloth

and feathers taken from birds they can’t name.

Boys toss balls. Girls run behind sticks and hoops.

Boston’s curving streets aren’t courtrooms.

Here Edmonia doesn’t have to shove past staring,

but her story still follows her like a fox.

She returns to the parlor to stab a needle

through cloth, shorten sleeves, widen waistbands.

The bottoms of fashionably full gowns

take entire mornings to hem.

Memories won’t lie still, but stun, startle, dart

like her hand moving up and down, as if casting

a spell to hide the girl who holds a needle,

to make a world small as her stitches,

the needle’s brittle point

the blades of scissors

a wrist’s soft skin

coiled red thread.

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