Shanna McGoldrick is a writer and journalist living in Manchester, in the UK.
A life in yarn
Our Grandmother’s teeth click quietly like knitting needles
as she threads strands of stories through themselves
from the yarn she keeps in her pocket.
We settle into the sibilations as she whittles the air
to the shapes of the priests, their nuns, the graft,
the penury, the whisperings, the stirrings and the vigour.
With her needles she unpicks the arcane knots of a story bigger than this,
stitching the wool deftly into the fusses and gossips of a life,
but they spool, re-tangled, at our feet.
Outside the land lies dark and still.
Her words glide and spill
over the backwaters of time.
Which has left its breath marks on the walls of this house
where we sit still as mice,
hoping she won’t notice that we’re not in bed.
When I speak with my Grandmother I feel English
in that rigid, clunky way. My voice thins
over the aching hollow where the song should dwell.
Impossible to believe that we come from this place.