I had a roommate once

she had skin like caramel

and she liked to tell us stories

 

One day after dinner we asked why she’d rather sit on the pavement to knit

while we drowned our sorrows in wine

 

She smiled like the sun on a dark day

her silver tooth twinkled like a star in the night sky

and she told us why-

 

“I was taught to hide my pain in knitted yarn

go for bright colours to show happiness

make melody on wool

 

I am half cast- that’s the Nigerian word for biracial

I used to say I’m half of my mother, half of my father

now I see myself as a knitted yarn

made of loom and loop,

full of each

 

I embody two cultures, two skin tones

I’m a confluence

I make them meet

 

one grandmother pounds me yam every Christmas

she teaches me to move my waist in the rhythm of the drums

the other teaches me country songs

she bought me a pony at sixteen

taught me the art of knitting

and named me sunflower”

 

that night- we knit a sunflower handkerchief

 

now when I try to fill the space in my life

I drop the wineglass for the knitting pin