Learning to Knit During a Pandemic

The disease blooms numbers

that spread across maps and climb bar graphs.

In broad daylight they ride the wind,

dark petals drifting into the spaces between skyscrapers,

urban canyons

no one visits.

Life turns inward. Coffee and books, dogs,

the sound of rain on the roof,

candles burning inside cheap, colored glass.

I crave simple things,

locate yarn, needles, a video that promises

to teach me to knit in six easy steps.

Being left-handed, I suspect that, like everything in life,

the six steps won't be easy.

That the woman effortlessly weaving color into form

isn't telling all. There may be seven steps. Or eight.

But I go on.

Between my fingers crimson unravels

and remakes itself row by row, a stitch at a time,

clumsy as the beat

of a repurposed heart.