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Wrapped in Red

Relapses are most frequent in autumn in those whose veins are most full.                  

                          –American Journal of Insanity, Vol. XIX, No. 1, July 1862

You wind skeins of red wool.
The floor strewn with rolling balls of yarn.
You pick one up       put it down
brew a cup of tea.
Fortified     you cast on
& knit.

Fall comes.       Undone.
You bind yourself tight
in the red sweater coat wind
the too-long belt
around your middle again
& again       trek
through neighborhoods
oblivious of the hour.
Each day unravels
      mind in motion.
         Wool stitches do not conceal
                   the bulge of your veins.

Cynthia Bargar’s poems have appeared in LUMINA Online, Gargoyle, Driftwood Press, Apeiron Review, Sonic Boom, The Centrifugal Eye, and are forthcoming in Stoneboat Literary Journal and Loch Raven Review. She is the Managing Editor of Pangyrus Lit Mag (www.pangyrus.com) and lives in Provincetown and Boston, Massachusetts.