5/28/10

Secret Stitches
By Paula Ray


Through the eye of a needle held by a demon seamstress--you pulled me: a silk red thread of a dream. Taught was the muslin fabric clamped in an embroidery loop resting on the demon’s lap.

She has horns for a crown and a womb where evil is born from fertilized eggs of lust. She is life and I was afraid of her and had curled myself around a spool so tightly no one wanted to bother unraveling me. I thought being knotted was safe.

You picked and picked at my edge until a single strand lifted away from the nest I had become.

As the seamstress used me to create rose petals on a table cloth reserved for special occasions, I felt a rush--piercing through the white cloth and leaving my scarlet stitch. To live is to sin and to not live is also a sin. I could not see this before you forced me through the metal spike and held my end so I couldn’t escape.

This demon used me up and I panicked as she tied my tail so I couldn’t come loose from her fabric, but then something beautiful happened: you looked at me with eyes I’d never felt before—the way they softly studied my shape and shadows, the artistry of my new form against the white fabric. I felt beautiful and admired, even cherished.

You knew who I was meant to be, but I didn’t. Was it wrong to become a rose by the hands of a demon? Yes, but was it right to remain a noose wrapped around a spool, a waste, unseen?

Look at me again, Love. Then, place your plate on top of me and feast. I am amaranthine because of you, for you and in my eyes you are a god.

Stain me with your wine. Hide me beneath your overflowing platter. I will still be there, underneath it all, the same rose--forever blooming on a cloth of celebration woven from sin and the whiteness of innocence.


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Paula Ray is a musician with a syncopated heartbeat. She takes pills for this in the form of poems. She swallows them whole then has hallucinations and pretends she can fly.