---
title: 'Rough gloves'
project: 'Elegies for Alternate Selves'
...

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][].

[cheek or thigh]: 16-feedingtheraven.html
[break a hand]: 40-weplayedthosegamestoo.html
[maw]: 32-serengeti.html