Stitch
I thread the needle with cotton
fine and purple as the lavender growing in tufts
outside of our living room window.
I’ve taught myself to sew in this extra time,
these hours of recuperation, with little remuneration
from work – statutory sick pay allows only for indoor activities.
I’ve been spending portions of the day with thoughts of you –
I slice up my time into two hour pieces, so as not
to indulge one topic over another.
In these private moments, I press items of your clothing
onto my skin, and imagine your flesh filling them,
populating their empty spaces with your private places.
I’m sewing my name into the hems, and behind the labels,
of everything you own – making myself invisibly,
some might say insidiously, with you always.
Amy Ekins is a writer of fiction and non-fiction, a project manager for a publishing company, and is finishing up her MRes in Creative Writing at Northumbria University – for which she won their fee-waiver scholarship. She tweets at @AmyEWrites.