Eva’s Quilt

She lives here like a shadow of her quilt,

the pieces of her life precisely square

and bound in patterns firm as those of guilt.

Yet her hands that dust her china Fred Astaire

move with the grace of dancers spinning out.

For a moment she is Ginger, swaying there.

But now her mirror dims and turns about;

her vision, slipping upward from her stance,

refuses her thin face, her sloping mouth.

She who would never hope at a country dance,

who hid among old women, tightly shawled,

assumed no man found pleasure in her glance.

A woman plain from birth, she forfeits all.

Her hair is gray and screens one-half her face,

her only friend a cat that jumps the wall.

In other rooms her quilt might warm the place;

she might unjudge herself. In a world unbuilt,

she might fasten back her hair and show her face.

Copyright © 1986 Marian Jane Dickinson