Redeployed by Catherine Zickgraf

She crochets upstairs
from his lonely chair,
tuning out the rockets of July-smoke sky.

For bills not flags, yet
she chained her youth
to the steel of his military-morgue toe-tag.

Under lashes like willows, still she weeps,
feeling how his fingers
last brushed along hers. 

Her dreams pull skeins,
and months of stitching
are years she blankets in dim remembering.

Every loop is a prayer of hand-locked yarn,
a protection from harm
till he parachutes home.  

*Previously published in Clare Songbird, The Brave, Fall 2019

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Catherine Zickgraf’s main jobs are to write poetry and fold laundry. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, Victorian Violet Press and The Grief Diaries. Her recent chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Aldrich Press. 

Read and watch her at caththegreat.blogspot.com