Doubt

I left work at 5 today and just drove. I didn't go home and for a while I was just letting a habit follow through; I drive up and down Western all the time. If I don't go home I'm very likely turning onto Western on my way to somewhere else.  So by the time I passed Sushi Neko, I knew I was heading to the Red Cup, and oh yes, they are open on Thursday evenings.  Sweet!  I need caffeine to cure this headache, I think.  I chat with a few people I know for a few moments, and then settle down with my cafe mocha and my notebook. I didn't plan to work on my writing, but I might as well.

I am trying to figure out what is happening in these latest poems. On February 20th I wrote about the quilt unraveling due to use, and how the girl takes the loosened button and makes a bracelet out of it and the red thread.  But tonight I continued with the girl purposefully unraveling the quilt her grandmother made out of love from the clothes, sheets, and curtains that she had once buried in the cornfield.

For some reason I have her father silent.  He is distant with her, not telling her the stories of her grandmother's and great-grandmother's struggles.  So she tries to interpret them from the quilt, unraveling the threads and lace and ribbons, buttons and jagged pieces of fabric.  He wonders why he should tell her about the violence, murder and rape...  "What would she learn of love from this history?" he asks himself.
So because he does not tell her the family history, she harbors doubt that her father truly loves her.  This is why she wore the red thread around her wrist, and why she stitched a bracelet with that same thread and buttoned around her wrist with one from the quilt.  "The girl can button doubt to her wrist, but she cannot unravel the love that is stitched with threads that were covered with the soil of family."