I’ve been a piece of fabric before
With scissors hanging off my skin,
a pattern cut, spilling like silk to the floor
held together by staples and pins.
My mother’s sewing machine still has the spool
From the summer she died on a Mhunga bus in 1997;
I like to tell myself the rose gold yarn
is the thread that connects me to her in the heavens
And my daughter will know she’s the next stitch in the thread
Of the spinners and the weavers and the living and the dead.
My grandmother taught me to embroider, crochet and knit
But there was nothing in that biscuit-tin sewing kit
To prepare me for when my heart and body broke
Or make peace with loss of function when I woke.
When they stitched my hip and my arm and my thigh
in the hospital glare with my bloodshot eyes…
They asked me if I had a child, and if I was with child
Eight times I went under and eight times they asked
Eight times I said no and many more until I was wild
And I thought of my mother, tacking at her machine
And of my daughter that she’d never see
And I silently cried and sighed inside
At the twine of time and God’s design.
Emelda Gwitimah’s fiction and CNF work have been featured in The AKE Review, The Willowherb Review, The Post Journal and Bambazonke Online. Her poem, “Soil” is featured in the anthology, One Poem: GBV Survivor’s Edition (TsongaMakololo Press, 2020). She has also been shortlisted twice for the Intwasa Short Story Prize (2020, 2021). Her latest poetry can be found in the African Urban Echoes anthology (Griots Lounge, 2024) and the Strange Water anthology (Mystery Publishers Kenya, 2023). You can find her on X @bellemelda.