I lost my hands & knit replacement ones
from spiders’ threads, stronger than steel but soft
as lambs’ wool. Catching as they do on nails
& your collarbone, you don’t seem to like
their rough warm presence on your cheek or thigh.
I’ve asked you if you minded, you’ve said no
(your face a table laid with burnt meat, bread
so stale it could break a hand). Remember
your senile mother’s face above that table?
I’d say she got the meaning of that look.
You’d rather not be touched by these rough gloves,
the only way I have to knit a love
against whatever winters we may enter
like a silkworm in a spider’s blackened maw.