The first poem was written for the Poetry Anyone? Tarmalane Challenge. I used these lines as inspiration.

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

~II~


As I stitched a name
blazoned in sable,
you kicked. Blood dropped
from a finger pricked, gules
rosettes staining weft.
The canvas of your life
began with insurgence,
your limbs bursting with
maverick energy.


And I could not unpick each stitch
with my fine needle and dying
eyes, so fire scorched
away the shame.
The threads were cut -as surely
ripped as the umbilicus of that
most recalcitrant child.