My Cannibal Cape

My Cannibal Cape is born from the worn out creations of women who knitted their way across continents and oceans, in and out of life and death and time itself.
I steal meat from their handiwork and weave it into my own.

Yarns connect past to future; yarn connects front to back.
Stories are told in warp and weft, reveries woven into reality, imaginings made solid -
to cover a granny's table -
make a wedding gown -
a hearth rug where warriors slept.
Now, it's my Cannibal Cape.

This fluffy bit of yellow was once the purest white.
It was a blanket worn on icy nights by babes long since passed.

The brown came from my Grandmother’s summertime hunting sweater. It smells still of forest...
and blood...
and the soap Grandma used attempting to remove the stench.

That darker green once wrapped around the hips of a pirate’s wench.
At least, that’s what Mother called herself if anyone asked what she’d done with her youth.

The red lined the matriarch’s boots when she climbed a mountain and took her people across the sea.
She fought a war, concurrently lost and won,
died old and proud and free.

These strands served them all, these women who walked my path before I had feet.
My Cannibal Cape serves me now on city streets.
It is my my armor and parchment. I write my life in every stitch.
My story echoes behind me as I walk and rings like a bell which will be heard by generations not yet come.

© Stephanie Mesler 2018