Words_Just_Words

Doilies
Jacqueline Bishop

In the house off Constant Spring Road, the one
with the short spreading Julie mango tree
in the front yard, the lime tree
with their dark green leaves and delicate
white flowers; the palm-sized
burnt orange hibiscuses,
poisonous butter yellow allamandas,
I remember, I remember,
how my mother’s hands kept moving
as she produced one white crochet doily after another.
The slender silver hook and the fragile symmetry.
A Ford Escort was parked in the garage of that house.
Oil-slicked men tried stealing that powder blue
Ford Escort one night as we slept uneasily in the house—
Discussions began immediately about leaving
one i/land for another. The fat
balls of thread in my mother’s lap, at her feet,
those threads already unspooling, connecting one
memory, one life, one distant country to another.