Illustration by April Milne
My mother left me a suitcase of sweaters
she knitted in mohair, wool, acrylic
in blends of burnished ochre
bright carmine, sombre blue, sea green.
I see her now in her favourite red chair
by the front window
her feet on a low footstool
the southern light quietly pouring in
as she sat knitting
filling the stone hours that marked her days.
Silently her lips moved
as though counting the stitches
intricate and new on her worn needles.
Lost in her reminiscence
she intoned snatches of long ago conversations
from the skein of memories uncoiling
in the sudden dimness that flooded the room.
Caroline Wong came to Canada from China in her early teen and lived in Vancouver’s Chinatown with her family from the 1950s to the early 1960s. She is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio program at SFU. She writes fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in The Prose-Poem Project, The Canadian Tales of the Fantastic, Prism International, Grain, and Ricepaper.
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