Stitch

Cathy's mother says
she is her sweet heart.
My mother says I am a piece of her liver.

Cathy has an ice blue cardigan.
My mother holds Cathy still
in front of her, and studies the stitches

with her eyes screwed up. She
measures me with the span of her hand
and marches me over the bridge

to Argyle Street for wool and needles.
Sitting by the fireplace, she is fierce,
unwinds the skein to a ball

off my arms, slips one, purls one,
unravels, starts again,
needles clicking, clacking

in time to the pattern in her head,
the shape of the life she is plotting
for me, knitting herself into me.

Done, she holds the cardigan
over my chest, a perfect copy
of Cathy's, but red.

The edges wriggle more
because hers is machine-made
and mine is worked by hand.

Years later, when I leave, my mother cries
on the phone, and says her liver
has been torn apart.