stitching pain

my grandmother taught me how to do it:

to see the headache
as a ball of blue light

to see a needle and slim
but strong thread

to thread the needle and begin to stitch
around the edge of the pain

to draw the string tight until
the pain shrinks and then

to take the ball and throw it away

and that’s what it took to get rid of hurt, she said back then,
and sometimes it works, i say now

i don’t know how well it works for other things —
history, accumulation, regret — my grandmother

hated my father for example
and he never disappeared —

but she made the most elegant lace
and her pillowcases were beyond compare

so something besides the headache indeed yielded to her needle
i am trying to forget that now

sitting here holding my head to one side
and thinking of the last conversation i had with you

the father i would never have had if it had been up to her
the redskin who soiled her baby girl

i was always her perplexing favorite
“i don’t like the indian peoples why you dress up like

the indian peoples”
i couldn’t tell her why it felt more right and i still don’t really know

but i never got any closer with you either, dad
and you’d drop gems like “this headache

would kill a white man” and you’d brush me off
when i tried to teach you how to stitch it away

i wish we’d had a sensible story
i wish we’d had a stitchable life

and we don’t talk much anymore, i know
when we do i end up with a headache, don’t you

but i’m not stitching you away
i cannot do that

there’s been too much of that here already
and we need each other undiminished

by embroidery
and remote viewing