SOCKS
(Mormon Wife #2, Winter 1846-47)
Council Bluffs, Iowa
“The dark winter was one I don’t wish to remember,
in a place I shall never forget.”
Mormon woman, Winter Quarters, 1847
I watched everything, my glassy eyes dark, reflecting everything around me.
I could see through people but not into them. Like a crow, I perched, warning
of impending danger, long before anyone saw it coming.
Magghie ruffled my feathers the moment I first laid my black eyes on her.
Magghie’s beauty, so threatening- a beauty completely un-aware of itself,
or the power it potentially held.
Perhaps it was the German chamomile teas she drank that made her skin glow.
Perhaps it was the lack of self-consciousness that came from
never having to look at her self in a glass.
Perhaps it was the way she sang from
waking on through her day’s most menial tasks.
Perhaps it was her eyes – looking until they were done looking,
without ever thinking she needed permission.
Or perhaps it was her ease of moving.
Over ground, high up on a horse, or wagon seat, through the woods and fields,
up a tree, at the butter churn, in the garden.
Perhaps it was all of these things – that made her so attractive.
But I knew; truly, it was the girl’s eyes.
I knew my husband could not even look into them, without blushing to his brows,
giving him self away, though he continually pretended his attentions went unnoticed….
I knew. I knew what was beautiful…
That I myself was not.
And thus the walls closed in around me, against that suffocating winter,
protecting me little against the blossoming I would bear witness to come spring.
I knew the girl would further bloom, and blood would rise, and those blue eyes,
those blue eyes would continue to melt the men.
The madness took over till I could not put my head down to a night’s sleep in that cabin,
in that bed, in that valley, never more.
Each night, sleep came shorter, more frequently disturbed by my ravenous
growing child waking within me, haunting my dreams.
No, I could not rely on sleep. And I could not rely on him. I felt him pull away,
as I shrank, and my belly grew, tight and hard. I knew, it was just a matter of time
before he would turn against me.
I dreaded it and so carefully planned my escape- back to the civilized life I once lived.
Back to safe traditions; back to embroidering. So I planned it, with every stitch,
in the middle of the night, quietly knitting, extra warm socks for my journey.
I would not rely on him, or anyone, to get me there.
I would not rely on that monstrous wagon.
I would walk back there myself, on my own two feet, carrying my own baby.
I would walk but I would not wear out my feet.
Waiting for the ground to thaw, that long month before spring,
I knit twenty-seven pair of socks before I stopped.
OTHER PEOPLE’S GHOSTS © Barbara Salvatore
READING: Crescent Moon, Lincoln, Nebraska, April 2012